Oral Answers to Questions

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was asked—

Social Exclusion

Simon Hughes: What assessment she has made of the trends relating to social exclusion identified in the Households Below Average Income 2005-06 report.

Patrick McFadden: Since 1997, the Government have lifted 600,000 children out of relative poverty. That is a major achievement and represents significant progress towards our child poverty target. We are responding to the Households Below Average Income report in part through recent announcements in the Budget, which are expected to lift a further 200,000 children out of poverty.

Simon Hughes: I am grateful for the Minister's answer, but I could not tell from that whether he accepts that the number of children in severe poverty has risen, and that therefore the target looks unlikely to be met. Can he share with us what role his Department has in banging heads together across other Departments, so that the Government can get back on target and youngsters in boroughs such as mine, and also all over the country, can have the prospect of opportunities in the future, and not be held back by the poverty of the past?

Patrick McFadden: We have always accepted that the target is challenging. That is why the Chancellor announced measures in the Budget to help lift more children out of poverty. Those include, for example, lifting the child element of the child tax credit by £150 above indexation from April 2008. Child benefit for the eldest child will become £20 per week by April 2010. Together with other measures, that will mean that households with children will be, on average, £200 per year better off, and households with children in the poorest fifth of the population will be £350 per year better off. In addition, the Department for Work and Pensions has announced specific measures for London, also aimed at lifting more children out of poverty.

Jessica Morden: Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a stark contrast between the measures announced in the Budget to lift 200,000 children out of poverty and the record of the Conservatives, under whom child benefit was frozen for three years running and we had one of the highest child poverty rates in Europe?

Patrick McFadden: My hon. Friend is right. Had we continued with the package of measures in place in 1997 and simply uprated them in line with inflation, child poverty would have risen by 800,000. At that time we were around the bottom of the European league, but because of the measures we have taken we have lifted 600,000 children out of poverty and, as I said, it is hoped that the measures announced in the Budget will lift a further 200,000 children out of poverty.

Greg Clark: The same figures show that there are 400,000 more people in severe poverty than when Labour came to office, and it has become more difficult to escape from poverty. When I went to university, someone from a poorer background was three times less likely to go to university than someone from a wealthy background. Today, such a person is five times less likely to go, so social mobility is declining. Does the Minister believe in social mobility? If so, why does he think it is falling under Labour?

Patrick McFadden: I certainly believe in social mobility. A child born in this country today has far less chance of living in poverty than if the hon. Gentleman's party had continued in power. There are 440,000 fewer children in workless households today. Absolute poverty for children has fallen by 1.8 million. The risk of absolute poverty has halved. By any measure that one cares to use, the life chances of children born under the present Government are a lot greater than they would have been if the hon. Gentleman's party had stayed in power.

Danny Alexander: The figures show both rises in child poverty and rises in income inequality. The Minister is responsible for joined-up government in these matters, so how does he explain the fact that the joint ministerial committee on child poverty, bringing together the devolved Governments and the UK Government under the chairmanship of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, has not met since 2002? Does he think that the next Prime Minister will do any better?

Patrick McFadden: I believe that the next Prime Minister will continue the battle to ease relative poverty. The Chancellor has shown in his time in office that he has a deep commitment to combating child poverty. Families with children are on average £1,500 a year better off since 1997, taking all changes into account, and the poorest fifth of families with children are, on average, £3,400 a year better off. What matters is the outcome for families in those circumstances, rather than whether or not a committee has met.

Social Exclusion

Si�n Simon: What estimate she has made of the cost of intervening in the early years of a child's life to prevent social exclusion.

Anne Snelgrove: What assessment she has made of the balance of costs and benefits of intervening in the early years of a child's life to prevent social exclusion.

Hilary Armstrong: Early intervention is a guiding principle of the social exclusion action plan. The report highlighted the relative costs and benefits of the rigorously tested nurse-family partnership programme from the United States that provides intensive home visiting services by health visitors to disadvantaged mothers from pregnancy until a child is two years old. The evaluation showed that for every $1 invested in the US, $5 was saved down the line. The Government are considering what can be learned from that early intervention approach, with pilots of the programme being launched in 10 sites across England.

Si�n Simon: As the nurse-family partnerships have been tremendously successful in America and are acclaimed by midwives and nurses in this country in working-class communities such as mine, does my right hon. Friend agree with the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), who has dismissed them as foetal ASBOs, or does she think that he should stick to what he knows: well-paid nannies, interior-designed home nurseries and silver spoon

Mr. Speaker: Order.

Hilary Armstrong: The Tory party knows that the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) made a mistake and it is looking at the matter again, and I hope that today it will give us its commitment to work with us on this. I met some mothers and nurses yesterday in Slough and I met David Olds with the Prime Minister this morning. It is an incredibly successful programme that is being embraced with real enthusiasm by health visitors and midwives here, and I hope that we can demonstrate that by working with the most disadvantaged we can help them to turn round their lives and the lives of their children.

Anne Snelgrove: As antisocial behaviour is a product of social exclusion, which is causing many problems in my constituency and throughout the country, what examples of good practice could my right hon. Friend give my local council in Swindon to help it to learn from that and so tackle antisocial behaviour through social exclusion?

Hilary Armstrong: The nurse-family partnership has been used in America for almost 30 years and has demonstrated that by the time children who have participated in the scheme are 15, they are between 50 and 60 per cent. less likely to be involved with the criminal justice system in any way. The programme has been well evaluated and we are working hard on the pilot schemes to see what we can learn. I hope that my hon. Friend's constituents, local authority and primary care trust will look at what we will be able to achieve and help us to mainstream the programme so that towns such as Swindon can benefit.

Tony Baldry: One way in which the Government are intervening in early years to help social exclusion is through children's tax credits and the working family tax credit. The right hon. Lady must recognise that Members of Parliament are still receiving significant numbers of parents at their surgeries who have problems with those tax credits. May we copy those cases to the right hon. Lady, not because we expect her to solve them, but in the hope that, being a fair-minded Minister, she might start to recognise that there are some generic issues that she might take up with those of her Cabinet colleagues who are responsible for such tax credits?

Hilary Armstrong: I frequently have conversations with colleagues in the Treasury and I know that there is the occasional problem, but that overall the scheme massively benefits those parents who are obtaining work, many of them for the first time, and can now earn sufficient money to make work pay so that they can do the best by their children. Those programmes will help parents to obtain the confidence and skills to get back into work so that they, too, can do the best by their children.

Lyn Brown: My right hon. Friend has spoken well about the impact of the nurse-family partnership scheme, but given that Tower Hamlets, my neighbouring borough, has been lucky enough to have one of the 10 pilot schemes, when might we see an equal amount of assistance and help for my constituency?

Hilary Armstrong: Many hon. Members, and certainly their constituents, are asking that question. We have overwhelming interest in this pilot programme, with more than 40 per cent. of the country applying for it. We are determined that we will learn the lessons as quickly as we can about what changes are needed within our systems. The Department of Health, which is leading on the implementation of the programme, is considering health visiting and midwifery services to see how they can mainstream the important aspect of ensuring that we pick up, at the earliest stage, those parents who are vulnerable and give them the support they need.

Local Government/Third Sector

Ann Coffey: What recent discussions she has had with ministerial colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government about the local government White Paper and its impact on the voluntary sector.

Edward Miliband: We have worked closely with the DCLG to prepare and implement the White Paper. It contains important commitments to help the voluntary sector: making key parts of the compact such as multi-year funding part of local government inspection and financial codes; encouraging the transfer of community buildings to the voluntary sector; and ensuring that local authorities involve community organisations in decision making.

Ann Coffey: I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. In my constituency, voluntary organisations and volunteers make a huge contribution to the community life of the town, but one of the problems that they face is that they have yearly funding, which makes it difficult for them to plan. Does he agree that in order to have a real partnership between voluntary organisations and the statutory sector, those organisations need to get three-yearly grant programmes from primary care trusts and councils to provide some stability for the voluntary sector?

Edward Miliband: I agree with my hon. Friend. I am looking forward to my visit to Stockport next month to see at first hand the excellent work that the voluntary sector does there. The key thing about the local government White Paper is that, for the first time, councils will be assessed on their commitment to multi-year funding under the local government inspection framework and the financial codes. That progress has been warmly welcomed in the voluntary sector, and I hope that it will make a difference not only in Stockport, but around the country.

DEPUTY PRIME MINISTER

The Deputy Prime Minister was asked

Climate Change

Natascha Engel: What recent discussions he has had with his counterparts in other European states on climate change.

John Prescott: In April, I launched the British Council climate change campaign, Opportunity through Action, in Prague, with keynote speeches at a dinner debate and a youth conference. I engaged the Czech Prime Minister and two Deputy Prime Ministers on the subject of climate change during separate bilateral meetings. Later that week, I discussed similar issues with the Maltese Prime Minister and President.

Natascha Engel: I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. As he will know, not only is the UK one of the only countries to meet its Kyoto targets, but we are set to double our commitments. Unfortunately, greenhouse gas emissions and carbon dioxide do not respect national borders, so what is he doing to ensure that our European colleagues meet their Kyoto targets?

John Prescott: That is a good question. I am pleased to confirm that Britain is one of only two countries in the European Union to have achieved their Kyoto targets. Indeed, as my hon. Friend says, we will achieve about 23.6 per cent. below the base levelalmost twice the level set for Kyoto. As she knows, the Prime Minister is talking to the EU President today about the G8 proposals for improving the situation. Indeed, the European Union will meet in the autumn to discuss further proposals so that it is on target to reach the Kyoto target by 2010-2012. The point is that the United Kingdom has already achieved it and has shown that we can have economic growth and achieve environmental targets at the same time.

Vincent Cable: As the Deputy Prime Minister has announced his retirement, perhaps I should start by genuinely thanking him for his contribution to British public life, especially on behalf of those groups who owe him a special debt of gratitudeI am thinking of the parliamentary sketchwriters, British amateur boxing, and the makers of Jaguar cars. On the contribution that cars have made to global warming and climate change, he once famously said that he would have failed if car use failed to decline. What, in retrospect, does he now feel that he could have done differently?

John Prescott: Our policies on climate change show that we can achieve the Kyoto targets and lead the world. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks about me. He was a member of my party for a whileindeed, he has gone through more parties than Paris Hilton. Nevertheless, I am grateful for his remarks and proud to have been in a Government who, for 10 years, have realised major achievements on the environment and the Kyoto targets.

Office Budget

Henry Bellingham: [ Interruption. ]

John Prescott: I hope that the hon. Members understand that the only way I can get through is by delay.
	I meet my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and other ministerial colleagues on a regular basis to discuss a wide range of issues.
	My Department is participating in the current comprehensive spending review in the same way as all other Departments, and my Department's annual report, which I will publish shortly, sets out the important contribution that it has made in the past 12 months.
	The Government are committed to improving delivery of public services and ensuring maximum value for money for the taxpayer.

Henry Bellingham: I am grateful to the Deputy Prime Minister for that response. Will he give the House four specific achievements or successes that he attributes to his occupancy of his present office?

John Prescott: I am happy to say that I contributed to achieving some of the best general election resultsthree times. In those 10 years, I am pleased to have been in a Government who have not only produced 2.5 million jobs, but proved that there can be economic prosperity and social justice. I am pleased to have played a key part in the Kyoto negotiations, which are a major achievement. I am especially delighted to have rescued the channel tunnel rail link, which collapsed under the Tories, and will now be open in November on budget and on time. It is the first modern rail system in Britain. Those are only a few achievements, but if the hon. Gentleman has more questions, I shall answer them later.

Oliver Heald: On the subject of delay, I wonder whether we have been too hasty in assuming that the right hon. Gentleman will move on. There was a briefing in the Sunday newspapers about a new official post for him as an international diplomat, probably based on all those years of conflict resolution between No. 10 and No. 11. Has he had discussions with the Treasury about continuing to be bankrolled by 3 million a year?

John Prescott: I am proud of what I have done in government and of what the Department has achieved. Conservative Members will see that the annual report, which will be published shortly, justifies the work in which I have been involved in the past 12 months. It is more justified than that of Tory Deputy Prime Ministers if the records are compared. We get value for money.
	As for the diplomatic point, the achievement of Kyotobringing 100-odd nations together to agree somethingis a measure of our success. I doubt whether the hon. Gentleman could have done it.

Planning Policy

Shahid Malik: What recent progress he has made in the co-ordination of housing and planning policy across Government.

John Prescott: I have chaired a Cabinet Committee that takes forward the development of planning policy for an interdepartmental planning reform White Paper, which will be published soon.
	The White Paper examines planning as a whole, including for nationally significant infrastructure projects, responsibility for which is spread across various Departments. It will build on our planning reforms since 1997 in the light of recent reports by Kate Barker and Rod Eddington and deliver a planning system ready to meet the growing challenges that we face in the 21st century.

Shahid Malik: My right hon. Friend knows that carbon emissions per dwelling in the United Kingdom are six times greater than those in, for example, Sweden. What actions are the Government taking to ensure that we improve our record on that crucial matter?

John Prescott: We must accept that Sweden has done well. Indeed, it is one of two countries that is on target to meet its Kyoto targets. However, we will achieve double the Kyoto targets, which is not the position in Sweden. Between 1990 and now, Sweden has reduced carbon emissions by 4 per cent, while we have reduced them by 14 per cent. If the rest of the European countries copied the example of the UK and Sweden, we would be well on target to doing something serious about climate change.

John Butterfill: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that hon. Members representing the south-west are virtually unanimous in opposing the proposals of the regional unelected government to concentrate all the new houses that the Deputy Prime Minister wants to see built in existing urban areas, putting additional strain on the infrastructure of schools, hospitals, roads, public transport and sewage? On the other hand, is he aware that they would be in favour of distributing some of that housing in more rural areas where market towns and villages are under-using the infrastructure because they have been losing population?

John Prescott: I would certainly like to hear what the Tory party says in those rural areas about the hon. Gentleman's wish to transfer all the urban to them. Looking across the faces on the Tory Benches, I see them shaking their headsI suspect that they are in a bit of a difficulty with that proposal. In reality, people want to live in houses and they want to live in cities. We have designed them in order to achieve that. Even in the south-east, sons and daughters who want to live near their parents want their demands for houses to be met, rather than being told to go north, which would be unacceptable. We can organise matters in a way that will provide houses for all.

Louise Ellman: What progress has been made in linking housing development to improved public transport? Does my right hon. Friend support a revival of the plans for light rail in Liverpool?

John Prescott: The light transport developments of the past few years have been highly successful in encouraging people to use public transport, not their private cars. Manchester is a particular example. I know that there is a desire to see a light railway system in Liverpool, too. We have to recognise that they are expensive and different forms of financing have to be found. There have been some difficulties with one or two of the local authorities. That is why I am particularly pleased that in the Transport Act 2000, which I brought through the House, I included the principle of congestion charges and made it clear that the money gained from it should be hypothecated to improve public transport. I was particularly pleased to hear the mayor of New York say last week that he intended to bring in an environment charter for that city that included congestion charging and hypothecation of money to the public transport system. That is a way forward, which we have shown can be successful, and other countries are following us.

Oliver Heald: Home information packs originated in the right hon. Gentleman's office, but they have been slammed by the Consumers Association as useless. The Government's Better Regulation Commission has warned that their gold plating will lead to extra red tape. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors speaks of a detrimental effect on first-time buyers with rising prices, shortage of supply and abortive cuts. Will the right hon. Gentleman end this poisoned chalice and, in his co-ordination role, slap down this stupid proposal and agree to our motion on the Order Paper later today?

John Prescott: No, I will not, and I think that the House will vote against that motion this evening, too. This proposal is an effective way of bringing better justice to house purchasing. People can be cheated out of housing simply because someone broke the agreement. That cannot happen in Scotland, but unfortunately it can happen here. The consumer groups have made it clear that they want this packageindeed, the hon. Gentleman well knows that they welcome itbut they feel that the agreement for the certification of the house has been taken out.
	On carbon, let me just say to the hon. Gentleman that it is about getting a reduction of carbon in this country as part of our efforts to deal with climate change. We see the Tories telling us constantly that they believe in taking action against climate change on the one hand, but they then vote against any measure to improve the situation on the other.

Animal Rights Activists

Evan Harris: What steps he is taking to co-ordinate Government policy on animal rights activists and schools.

John Prescott: I chair the Cabinet Committee that co-ordinates the Government's strategy to tackle animal rights extremism. The Government are committed to tackling extremists who harass or threaten those involved in vital, life-saving scientific research. Our strategy is making a difference, as 25 individuals have received custodial sentences and the number of visits by extremists to private homes is down to fewer than five a month. I wrote recently to the police national co-ordinator for domestic extremism to congratulate him.

Evan Harris: I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that answer. Given that it is both Government and Opposition policy to support well regulated animal research, does he agree that it is vital to win the battle for the hearts and minds of young people, who should be exposed to arguments that are at least balanced? Given that there is underfunding of some of the non-governmental organisations working in this area in comparison with the anti-vivisection organisations, could he look further into the co-ordination and funding of efforts in schools to put balanced arguments about animal research?

John Prescott: The hon. Gentleman makes a sound point and I congratulate him on the courage that he has shown in tackling animal rights extremism. His views on that issue are well known in the House. In the Cabinet Committee, we have been discussing how we can do more to continue the education in schools about such extremism. We are working to provide materials for teachers to help them to approach these topical issues in the classroom. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Skills is leading work to provide training for teachers through a national network of science learning centres and the Government are also funding the production of a DVD of the play Every Breath, which addresses animal rights issues, for distribution to teachers. The forces involved in apprehending the extremists have done an excellent job and that is why I wrote to express that view on behalf of the Committee, although I am sure that I was writing on behalf of the whole House.

China

Laura Moffatt: What steps are being taken by the UK Government to support sustainable development in China.

John Prescott: Last month I met State Councillor Tang and Premier Wen in Beijing. I put to them a proposal to strengthen co-operation between the United Kingdom and China on sustainability, which has been an important focus of the China taskforce which I have chaired since 2003. In China, Premier Wen has highlighted the need for a new model of sustainability, including greater efforts to save energy, reduce consumption and protect the environment. The 11th five-year plan contained ambitious targets on energy and promoting sustainable development, including energy efficiency improvements of 20 per cent. by 2010. The Chinese are keen to step up exchanges with the UK to help them to develop sustainable communities, and they see both the Thames Gateway and the UK-designed eco-city at Dongtan as key examples.

Laura Moffatt: I thank my right hon. Friend for his efforts to share information about making our cities sustainable and to use that work as an example to other cities. I hope that he will continue with that work during his remaining time as Deputy Prime Minister. He will be sadly missed.

John Prescott: It is a lovely dayI thank my hon. Friend for her kind remarks. The work that we are doing with China to develop new principles for sustainable cities is among the important developments that I hope we can all support. China will transfer about 15 million people from rural areas to urban areas every year, and that will require about 1,000 more cities, which will create a tremendous demand for energy. Britain's skilled architects and planners can demonstrate the sustainable new model necessary to reduce the impact on the environment and improve the quality of our cities for the benefit of all.

PRIME MINISTER

Engagements

Richard Spring: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 16 May.

John Prescott: I have been asked to reply. As the House will be aware, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is in Washington today for discussions with President Bush ahead of the G8 summit in June. Later today, the right hon. Member for Charnwood (Mr. Dorrell), my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Sarwar) and I will meet members of the family of Madeleine McCann, at their request. I am sure that the thoughts of the whole House will be with them at this terrible time.

Richard Spring: I endorse the sentiments about the tragic situation in Portugal that the Deputy Prime Minister has just expressed.
	May I quote two statements to the right hon. Gentleman? The first is from the Chancellor of the Exchequer and future Prime Minister, who said:
	I think if you look back over the last 10 years, what happened over the dome was a mistake.
	The second is from the Deputy Prime Minister himself:
	If we can't make this work, we're not much of a Government.
	Who was right?

John Prescott: It was another terrible Tory mess that we inherited. I was supportive of the strategic necessity of building the Jubilee line under the previous Administration, as that was the right decision. It was also absolutely right to pay 350 million to bring back into use that poisonous bit of land in the middle of London. The target of 12 million people attending the dome was set before we came into office. I disputed that at the time, but 7 million did attend, and 98 per cent. thought it was a good exhibition. I think that they were right, and I am not apologising for that.

Paul Farrelly: Does my right hon. Friend recall that on Friday 2 March more than 100 Labour Members were in the House to make sure that the Temporary and Agency Workers (Prevention of Less Favourable Treatment) Bill was heard? As of today, 120 colleagues have signed early-day motion 1299 to urge progress on measures to end unfair discrimination against agency workers. In his remaining weeks in office, will my right hon. Friend look at that, try to get some progress on what was a promise at Warwick before the last election, and continue his decades-long fight for ordinary working people and hard-working families?

John Prescott: Yes.

William Hague: May I begin by echoing what the Deputy Prime Minister said about Madeleine McCann, her family and their terrible worries at this time? In all parts of the House, and throughout the nation, people will be praying for the safe return of that little girl.
	The Deputy Prime Minister has just been told, following the announcement of his resignation, that he will be missed on his side. He can be sure that he will be even more missed on our side. Seriously, although we have disagreed with many of his policies and exchanged many harsh words, he has so far served 37 years in the House and 10 years as Deputy Prime Minister, and by any standards that counts as an achievement. We wish him well in his retirement,
	However, he is still the Deputy Prime Minister, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer says that the Government should admit mistakesalthough the Deputy Prime Minister has just disagreed with the one that the Chancellor put at the top of the list. In the spirit of admitting mistakes, does he agree that the junior doctor recruitment process has been, by the standards of any Government, a truly shocking piece of incompetence?

John Prescott: It is so nice, after 37 years, to know that I will be missedbut I am not leaving the House yet, and I will still play my part. I will not be whingeing on the Back Benches, as I hear some of my colleagues do from time to time. I will support this Government, who have done a wonderful job over the past 10 years. I notice that the right hon. Gentleman did not attend the first session. Was his fee for the first session too expensive, or, given his rates for speaking, is the overtime that would be charged too much money for the Tory party?
	On the question asked by the right hon. Gentleman, let us make no mistake: the Secretary of State for Health has apologised for the difficulties with the technology and the system's delivery. I understand that she will also be making a statement after Prime Minister's questions, so the matter is best left for then.
	While the right hon. Gentleman is on mistakes, let me point out what this Government have done in office, compared with what his Government did. You gave us boom and bust, and we gave an economy of economic growth. You put 3 million[Hon. Members: He.] I will do it again. He gave the country boom and bust, and we delivered sustained economic growth, which we had not seen for decades. He put 3 million on the dole; we put 2.5 million people back to work. Most scandalously, he doubled the number of pensioners in poverty; we lifted 1 million out of poverty. I will swap mistakes and records with himthe House will hear more and more of that, whether I am Deputy Prime Minister or not. May I say that I am the longest-serving Deputy Prime Minister? I have seen off five Tory shadow spokesmen and four Liberal ones, and I am still here.

William Hague: We are very sorry to hear that the right hon. Gentleman will not be whingeing from the Back Benches, because we hoped that he wouldand indeed he may be tempted to in the coming years. However, the question was about junior doctors.
	A year and a half ago, the Government knew that unprecedented numbers of doctors would require training posts on 1 August. Now, with 11 weeks to go, thousands of junior doctors either have no training posts or have no idea where in the country their jobs will be, or even in which country they will be. If the Government are going to start admitting to mistakes, should they not also start holding Ministers to account? Given the right hon. Gentleman's long experience of sitting at the Cabinet table, which we have all just celebrated, who does he think is to be held responsible for the junior doctors fiasco?  [Interruption.]

John Prescott: Yes, the Tories. [An Hon. Member: Wicked Tories!] Yes, even the wicked Tories, when we look at the record.
	I have told the right hon. Gentleman that the Secretary of State will come to the House to deal with the matter later, and that will be the appropriate time for it to be dealt with. Indeed, I understand that she will be answering an urgent question that has been tabled. I do not know whether the right hon. Gentleman tabled it, but it has been tabled and we will answer it.
	I will tell the right hon. Gentleman where the fault lies. We had to increase the number of medical students when we came to office: this Government brought in 72 per cent.13,300more student doctors. The Opposition health spokesman, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley), knows that to be true. We doubled investment in junior doctor training, and doctors' pay increased by 17 per cent. That is not a bad record. It is the difference between us in government and the Tories in government.

William Hague: It is a bad record, given that large amounts of the money are being spent on junior doctors who must then find jobs in Australia and Canada because training posts are not available in this country. It is no good blaming everyone else. Two thirds of GPs now think that general practice has become worse in the last decade, and 95 per cent. of consultants say that the Government's performance in this regard has been miserable.
	The Chancellor is keen for the Government to admit to mistakes. Is not another of those mistakes the looming fiasco over home information packs? Given that the Chancellor wants to strengthen Parliament and strengthen home ownership, will he be here in Parliament this afternoon to vote with us against home information packs, which will damage home ownership?

John Prescott: The issue of home information packs is a typical example of the hypocrisy of the Opposition. They say Vote blue, get greenI think that that was their sloganbut as soon as an opportunity comes to vote for an energy conservation measure, whether it is home information packs or the climate change levy, they always vote against it. That is the difference. It is rhetoric versus substance.
	While I am on the subject of rhetoric versus substance, let me deal with the point about doctors. It is interesting to note that a Healthcare Commission survey published today shows that 90 per cent. of patients said national health service care was excellent, very good or good. There are 115,000 more nurses in the NHS, waiting lists are down, there are more operations, and there is massive investment in the health service. Under the Tories, waiting lists went up, beds were cut and the hospital building programme ground to a halt. Don't tell me about your record!

William Hague: The survey also shows that mixed-sex wards are still prevalent in a large number of hospitals and trusts, so don't tell us about your record! I mean that the right hon. Gentleman should not tell us about his record, Mr. Speaker.
	Let me return to the subject with which we are now dealing. Is it not the Chancellor who has cut grants for low-carbon building programmes and the use of solar power? I know that he always likes to disappear when there is trouble, but where is he today, when home information packs are to be debated? He is never around when there is bad news, although making himself invisible when he launched his leadership campaign was taking things to extremes.
	The Chancellor says that he wants to see more humility in Government. Given that home information packs are opposed by almost everyone with an interest in the stability of the housing market, why does he not listen to those people?

John Prescott: If the right hon. Gentleman looks back at the record on home information packs he will find that consumer groups fully supported them when I introduced them after we came to office. They made the point that they wanted the costs to be switched from buyers to sellers. Buyers already have to pay those costs, and many of them bitterly complain. They enter into arrangements to purchase a house before a contract has been produced and then find that they lose thousands of pounds in paying for things that they cannot claim for. The situation I have described does not arise in Scotland because Scotland had the courage to make the change. We have faced vested interest groups that have constantly opposed improving the lot of people moving house. However, in the end there will be a debate. There is no doubt that the energy part of the process has been improved, which is welcome, although the Conservatives will vote against it. That is another classic example of the difference between their rhetoric on the environment and what they actually do in this House.

William Hague: Home information packs will not deal with the point that the right hon. Gentleman has just raised. He mentioned Scotland; he will need the votes of Scottish MPs to force this measure through here in England. The Chancellor talks about admitting to mistakes, but no one is held to account on junior doctors. He talks about boosting home ownership, yet home information packs go through. He talks about humility, but refuses to listen even to the Consumers Association. Does not that show that the Chancellor cannot be the change that this country needs, and if a new Cabinet will have the same attitude as the old, collapsing Cabinet, should we not have a general election and let the people decide?

John Prescott: I would have thought that the right hon. Gentleman would be a bit careful about calling for a general election. I remember him doing that and getting horribly beatenit was one of the worst results of any Tory party. Given those circumstances, he should not ask for that. This Chancellor has been responsible for an awful lot of Government policy. That has resulted in a record period in office, with us winning three elections despite all the calls for general elections that we have had.
	The right hon. Gentleman points to difficulties to do with differences in view. May I ask him, as I have seen this today[Hon. Members: Oh.] I just wish to make a point. I notice that the leader of his party is away today and that there has been a change of policy on grammar schools. When the right hon. Member for Richmond, Yorks (Mr. Hague) was leader, he promised that there would be one in every town. I do not know how popular this U-turn is within his party [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Some leeway is always given, especially in the current circumstances.

John Prescott: Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I do not know how popular this new policy is in the right hon. Gentleman's party. Will all the Opposition Members who support it put their hands up?

Mr. Speaker: Order. Even the Deputy Prime Minister has now gone a bit too far.

Natascha Engel: We recently celebrated the 1 millionth child being helped by Sure Start. Will my right hon. Friend reassure the many parents and children in North-East Derbyshire who have been helped by this fantastic service that it will be safeguarded for the future?

John Prescott: Everybody agrees that Sure Start has been a very successful service. So far, about 1 million children have benefited from it and we are on course to achieve 3,000 Sure Starts within the next few years. There has been a real improvement, and we are proud of it. The next stage in the finances involves the comprehensive spending review, which is under way. We have given assurances that we are committed to this programme and they will be followed through in that future spending commitment.

Vincent Cable: May I express my colleagues' support for the McCann family?
	At the Labour party conference last year, the Chancellor said:
	David Miliband, John Prescott and I will publish proposals this autumn
	that was last yearfor the creation of 100,000 new environmental jobs. Where are they?

John Prescott: There are considerable advantages in such jobs and plans are under way to achieve that aim. The development of new low-carbon houses and the investment in the environment that is being made will constitute a major investment in creating jobs and will change the whole economy. The commitment to the 60 per cent. of emissions target that we have set ourselves requires many of our regions to make considerable changes to their economies and development. Such changes will bring that new type of investment and a tremendous number of jobs, and we are on the way to achieving that aim. The primary purpose of my speech at last night's John Smith lecture was to make precisely that point. Major changes are happening, and they are coming about because of climate change. Along with any kind of industrial revolution comes jobs.

Vincent Cable: The answer to my specific question is that this was an attempt to imitate the Conservative leader's undoubted talent for coming up with environmentally friendly but empty soundbites. Another soundbite that we heard this week was the proposal for eco new towns. Why does it make sense to provide tax breaks for developers to build on greenbelt land, when 25 million householders who want to improve energy efficiency and the quality and quantity of housing have to pay full value added tax rates?

John Prescott: There is no doubt that the hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but it is not a question of building on the green belt. The record of this Government since 1997 shows that we have transferred a lot of house building on to brownfield sites. The figure for such building was about 50 per cent. under the Tories when they left office; it is now 72 per cent., which is a considerable change. We are looking at the example of China and working with the Sustainable Development Commission on how to move away from the motorway cities into which Birmingham and Leeds have developed, for example, and to develop instead new types of cities and sustainable growth. That is the challenge and we are working hard on it. I will send the hon. Gentleman a copy of the lecture that I gave last night, which, as I said, was about precisely this issue.
	I take this move on the environment as perhaps being a leadership bid. According to today's edition of  The Times, half of Lib Dem voters want a new leader. Perhaps the time has come to pass the heavy mantle of leadership on to a younger man. The hon. Gentleman might bring true youth and vitality to the roleby the way, I congratulate him on reaching 64 last week.

Stephen Dorrell: I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for his expressions of sympathy and support for my constituents Kate and Gerry McCann, who are in Portugal, and their family. Does the Deputy Prime Minister agree that what has happened to the McCann family is every parent's worst nightmare? Will he join me in expressing the thanks of the House and of this country for the support of the authorities and people of Portugal in their efforts to find Madeleine, and will he express the hope that their efforts will be rewarded by success as quickly as possible?

John Prescott: The whole House will agree with everything that the right hon. Gentleman has said. It is indeed every parent's nightmare, and like everyone in the country, we hope and pray for the safe return of Madeleine. We are doing everything that we can to support the McCanns in Portugal. The Foreign Office has been actively involved, the Leicester police are involved and we are doing everything that we possibly can to assist Madeleine's parents in this most difficult situation. The investigation is of course the responsibility of the Portuguese police, but our people are assisting where they feel that that is necessary. The right hon. Gentleman, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow, Central (Mr. Sarwar) and I will meet Madeleine's relatives at about 1.15 pm, and I will express what I know is the full feeling of this House in these difficult circumstances.

Andrew Miller: When my right hon. Friend visited Ellesmere Port last year, he saw some wonderful new school developments built under this Government. He also visited West Cheshire college, which is on the site of his old secondary school. He will be interested to know that the college is going to expand in order to increase the opportunities for young people in my constituency. During the last few weeks of his time in office, will he ensure that he does all that he can to promote the development of the college's next phase, and to ensure that the architecture is of the standard that we have come to expect?

Hon. Members: Yes.

John Prescott: Thank you. Anybody else want to give the answer?
	We have had a huge investment in our education system which nobody doubts. There are arguments sometimes about value for money, but an announcement was made in the last two days about the new schools that have been built in every one of our constituencies. No hon. Member can say that they have not had a new school. We have built more new schools in the last five years than were built in the previous 25 years. That is another example. I will be delighted to see extra investment going to the Grange, as I used to know it, for adult education in Ellesmere Port. It was a secondary modern school when I went to itsome hon. Members may think that that is evident. At the time, many people were dependent on free school meals. Given the recent announcement about grammar schools and the concern about free school meals, I wonder whether having a low proportion of school meals will be a threat to the Eton establishment.

Mark Francois: On the topic of rhetoric versus reality, the Chancellor recently reannounced plans to build up to 200,000 zero carbon homes in Britain by 2016. But in yesterday's Committee on the Finance Bill, his great guru the Economic Secretary, when pressed on exactly how many such homes had been built under Labour to date, replied, None. Is that admission correct or was it a load of old, wellEd?

John Prescott: A number of houses have been built to a low carbon specification and we changed the rules governing building regulations. There were nine millennium sites, starting with Greenwich and the dome, where we built houses to low carbon standards and new environmental standards. We have built a number of thousands of them already. The Chancellor was referring to the importance of building many more to meet the need for affordable homes, and I fully support that.

David Kidney: This morning UNICEF ambassador Jemima Khan joins me in Westminster Hall to launch the breastfeeding manifesto. Will my right hon. Friend acknowledge that breastfeeding brings tremendous health benefits for mothers and babies, helps tackle health inequalities and can even save the NHS money? However, breastfeeding rates in the UK are lower than in many other countries. Will he give his personal support to the manifesto, which seeks to make our society more tolerant and supportive of breastfeeding?

John Prescott: Absolutely.

Simon Hughes: Given that official figures show that between 1997 and 2006 completions of council homes across the UK dropped from over 1,500 to under 250, and completions of other social housing dropped from over 28,000 to under 25,000, will the Deputy Prime Minister apologise for the appalling record of 10 years of lack of provision of social housing and promise that under his successors things can only get better?

John Prescott: I must tell the hon. Gentleman, as I have done from time to time, that in 1997 we made a decision that, as there had been 20 billion disinvestment in our public housing because the Tories had sold houses but done nothing about those lived in by millions of tenants, we would have a programme of 40 billion to bring 2 million homes up to standard in kitchens and central heating. A little old lady in central London told me that she was delighted with her central heating because, she said, I can now invite my kids without worrying that they will be cold. That is the difference that has been made for millions of people.
	The hon. Gentleman is not taking full account of the social housing provision in the Housing Association programme[Hon. Members: We are.] Well, the difficulty is that at the same time more and more demands have come from single parents. There is no doubt that there is a need to give the matter greater priority, as Ministers have said. That is what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor has been saying in his speeches, and I have no doubt that he will carry it out.

Ian Lucas: Schools without books, let alone computersthat is the reality for children in Lesotho in southern Africa. Those schools are linking with schools in Wrexham in north Wales so that children in Wales can get a real perspective on how lucky they are. Will my right hon. Friend commend the Global Schools Partnership, in which the Government invested heavily last year, and say how many schools are involved in that excellent project? Will he encourage all hon. Members to advance the cause of the partnership in their constituencies?

John Prescott: I very much agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said. I am sorry that I cannot tell him how many schools are involved in the programme, but I shall write to him with the information. The British Council has been conducting a similar programme called Connecting Classrooms. I was in Ghana and Sierra Leone only a few weeks ago, and I saw the importance of twinning schools there with schools in the UK and the benefit that it brings to the children. It is our intention to use the programmeand I know that you, Mr. Speaker, are aware of thisto bring children from Ghana, Sierra Leone and the West Indies here to join children from UK schools for a debate in the Westminster Hall Chamber on slavery and modern-day trafficking. That is an example of the beneficial connection between schools that the programmes makes possible. I am delighted to say that I have been involved in a programme that unites schools from various countries with schools in my constituency, and I am sure that other hon. Members have been similarly involved.

Crispin Blunt: Two weeks ago, the Minister for Europe explained in an article in  The Guardian that one of the failures of the Government in 2003, when he was Defence Secretary, was that it did not influence the American Administration sufficiently, especially with regard to the disbandment of the Iraqi army and Administration. He said that the Government had failed to notice the influence of Vice-President Dick Cheney. Since the Deputy Prime Minister marks Dick Cheney in the American Administration, what explanation does he have for that failure, and its catastrophic consequences?

John Prescott: I did not mark Dick Cheney particularly, although I met him once or twice. I recall that we met for the first time via video screen because, after the terrible 9/11 business, he was in a cave somewhere under security control. [ Interruption.] I remarked that I did not think that bin Laden would be living under the same conditions, but perhaps we should leave that aside. My right hon. Friend the Minister of Europe is entitled to his point of view. I do not know how correct it is, and I shall not make any comment as to whether I heard similar thoughts expressed in Cabinet but, as I have already made clear to the House, I am not joining that brigade.

Medical Training Application Service

Andrew Lansley: (Urgent Question) To ask the Secretary of State for Health to make a statement about the medical training application scheme.  [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Before I call the Secretary of State, hon. Members must leave the Chamber quietly.

Patricia Hewitt: Following the recommendations of the review group chaired by Professor Neil Douglas, the extended round one of recruitment to postgraduate medical training is now taking place. As the House knows, every eligible applicant for postgraduate medical training has now been guaranteed at least one interview for their first-preference post, regardless of the outcome of the earlier shortlisting process, although many, of course, will have more than one interview.
	An additional 15,500 interviews have therefore been arranged for the extended round one, and they are now taking place. I am extremely grateful to the consultants who have made themselves available for those additional interviews, and to their hospitals for making the time available.
	The review group agreed that offers of training places for the current round will be managed locally by individual postgraduate deaneries on the basis of published Modernising Medical Careers guidance. Subject to the outcome of the current judicial review, the first offers for hospital specialties in England will be made on or after next Monday, 21 May, with all initial offers made by early June and round one completed by late June.
	Given the continuing concerns of junior doctors about MTAS, the system will not be used for matching candidates to training posts, but will continue to be used by the deaneries. As we have stressed before, not all training posts will be filled in round one, so there will be further substantial opportunities for those who are not successful initially, including the new training posts that are being agreed by the NHS, the Department of Health and the Postgraduate Medical Education and Training Board.
	The review group has recommended, and we have of course accepted, that the further recruitment will be locally planned and managed by the postgraduate deaneries. Because most trainee doctors' contracts are due to end before the further recruitment has been completed, we will be agreeing with the review group, deaneries and hospitals the necessary measures to ensure that all those trainees are properly supported and patients continue to be properly cared for.
	Finally, as I told the House yesterday in relation to the recent security breaches of the online application service, a full security review of the MTAS system has now been completed and validated, and appropriate action taken to deal with the problems. The site was, therefore, reopened last week for the use of postgraduate deaneries only, to support the next steps in the recruitment process, including continued monitoring in line with MMC principles. Because the investigation has made it clear that criminal offences may have been committed, the full security analysis and report have been given to the police.

Andrew Lansley: I am sorry that the Secretary of State did not volunteer a statement and I am also sorry that today, in responding to my question, she said nothing more than she said in her written ministerial statement yesterday, yet many questions require answers.
	The Secretary of State has effectively abandoned MTAS. It will not be used to make offers in round one and it will not be used at all for round two. In her statement, she said that there would be further substantial opportunities in round two, but junior doctors need to know what that means. She has not told usalthough she must knowhow many training posts have become available through round one. In early April, the British Medical Association said that 18,500 training posts had been advertised and the Secretary of State must know how many eligible applicants there are. Originally, there were more than 34,000. How many are there now? That figure will give us a basis for establishing how many junior doctors are likely not to have training posts after round one.
	We need to know how many additional training posts there will be. The Secretary of State has still not told us how many will be created. The House will recall that on 19 March, when she responded to our first urgent question, I called for the creation of additional training posts. The Department asked NHS trusts to bid for such posts by 27 April and we are now approaching the point where those posts need to be put into the application process, yet we do not how many there are or where they are.
	It is vital that junior doctors know how many of the available posts are run-through training posts that will take them all the way to specialty status and how many are fixed-term or temporary training posts. The balance between the two matters tremendously, not least because if thousands of junior doctors do not obtain training posts this year, they need to know that there will be scope for additional run-through posts for complete specialty training starting next year. If they do not know whether those posts are available, they may choose to leave the profession or the countrya decision they may be making in weeks, not months.
	Will the Secretary of State tell the House why it has proved possible for the Scottish deanery to supply all the applicants with the four interviews they were originally promised, yet a guarantee of only one interview is possible in England? Will the Secretary of State understand and acknowledge that although we talk about junior doctors, they are actually people who have gone through five years of undergraduate medical education, a year of pre-registration as house officers and, in many cases, several years of academic and clinical experience? These are the people who are quite likely to be the doctors we rememberthose who treat us when we go to hospital. They are senior professionals and the way in which they are being treated is appalling.
	Even at this late stage, these people do not know where they will be working on 1 August. It may be anywhere from Cromer to St. Albans in the eastern region.  [ Interruption. ] Perhaps they would prefer to be in CromerI do not know. That issue is absolutely essential. These people have families to look after and careers to pursue. They have husbands, wives, or partners who have their own careers that cannot simply be picked up and dropped somewhere else in the country at five weeks' notice. That is what the Secretary of State and the system are requiring of them. When will the Secretary of State acknowledge that these people cannot be treated as numbers on a computer system, especially when the computer system crashes? They have to be treated as individuals.
	Will the Secretary of State now take responsibility for all this? In a survey published in  The Lancet yesterday, 95 per cent. of doctors said that they regarded the performance of the Department of Health on this issue as miserable. As she did on Channel 4 last night, the Secretary of State takes refuge in saying that the principles of MMC were agreed with the profession, but those principles included fair and effective recruitment, flexibility, and a wider career choice. Those principles have not been delivered; they have been undermined by the implementation of the MTAS process. No wonder that Sir John Tooke in his review is having to go back to ground zero to review the principles as well as the implementation of medical education and training.
	Does the Secretary of State recall the document that I have in my hand? It was an internal document from her Department last July and it looked at the communications needs of MMC-MTAS. It referred to having to communicate with chief medical officers and Ministers. How did the document describe Ministers' status last July? It referred to:
	High awareness, low understanding of details and complexity.
	That is the position that Ministers were in when they were in the midst of preparing for this shambles. The Secretary of State cannot chuck away the responsibility for this matter. She has to take responsibility for it. Will she now understand that the only way to do that is to resign?

Patricia Hewitt: The hon. Gentleman has raised a number of points, some of which we have covered in the House before. I have already explained the position with MTAS. The online application system has not been abandoned. In the light of the security review and the improvements that were made last week, it was reopened to the postgraduate deaneries, which will continue to use it for the recruitment process.
	The hon. Gentleman talked about the need for junior doctors to know how many training places will be available after round one. Of course they need to know, but we will not know how many training places have been filled in round one until round one is completed later in June. We know and have already discussed in the House how many posts there are. The overall total for the UK as a whole is about 23,500. That includes the general practitioner posts, which have been dealt with under a separate system. The remaining posts have been made available via MTAS. Of those posts, just under 12,000 are run-through training posts, 3,488 are fixed-term posts and 182 are academic posts. Those figures are for England. For the UK as a whole, the figures are just over 14,500 run-through training posts, 4,392 fixed-term posts and 185 academic posts.
	Those figures are all in the public domain and have been for some time, but the number of training posts that will be filled in round one and therefore the number that will be available for the next recruitment round will depend entirely on the decisions of interviewing panels. Those decisions will be taken only as the interviews are completed for each group of posts. The interviews are still taking place this week, although we expect them to finish early next week. The interviewing panels will then decide how many job offers to make to the candidates they have rated as appointable, and the candidates will then decide which of those job offers to accept. That process for round one will be completed towards the end of June. The expectation of the postgraduate deaneries is that the majority of posts will be filled in round one, before the end of June, but that there will remain a substantial number of training posts available to enable further recruitment to take place, including the extra training posts that we will announce shortly.
	The reason why we have not yet been able to announce the number of additional training posts is that it was not possible to begin to decide where those additional posts should be placed until we knew exactly how many candidates there were for different specialties. We did not know that until the candidates had exercised their right, as a result of the review group's excellent deliberations, to change their first preference. I realise that this is complicated and that Opposition Members might not be interested in the detail, but understanding and sorting out the detail is essential, so that is precisely what we are doing.
	As the candidates have now all reprioritised their applications, we know how many candidates there are for each specialty, and that information has been published. The Department, the review group, the royal colleges, the deaneries and the hospitals are now deciding where the additional training posts should be made available in such a way as to meet the needs of the service and patients. I am afraid that there is no point in creating large numbers of additional training posts if the service itself has decided that it does not need that number of jobs.
	The hon. Gentleman said that Scotland has offered all candidates four interviews. It has indeed done so, and the review group examined whether that would be possible in England, where, of course, the numbers are a great deal larger. There were certainly junior doctors who were pressing for that to happen. The review groupin other words the royal colleges and the British Medical Associationdecided, quite rightly, that it would be impossible to give every applicant four interviews for the simple reason that consultants would have to abandon patients completely to carry out four interviews for every candidate, regardless of whether those candidates were initially shortlisted. Every candidate is getting at least one interview, while manyprobably mostwill get more than that.
	It is a great pity that the hon. Gentleman has made no recognition at all of the admirable work and dedication of people such as Carol Black, the chairman of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, Jim Johnson, the chairman of the BMA, and their junior doctor colleagues who, through the review group, have helped us to put in place the necessary arrangements for this yeara difficult year in which problems have arisento ensure that this year's system will be as fair as possible to junior doctors and will continue to meet the needs of patients. Those are our priorities, and I will continue to deliver on them.

Barbara Keeley: When I wrote to my right hon. Friend a few months ago to outline the comments and concerns of the daughter of one of my constituents, who is training in the Leicester area, she gave me a helpful response. Does my right hon. Friend agree that to support my constituent's daughter to move through the process, it is right that we persist and work through any difficulties, rather than heeding any calls to abandon the recruitment process? My constituent's daughter and the consultant with whom she was working have put in thousands of hours on this across the piece, and it would be wrong to change and abandon the process at this point.

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The BMA and the royal colleges made precisely that point at the end of last week and again yesterday. If the process was abandoned, as is being sought through the judicial review, it would mean simply throwing away the enormous amount of work that has been done by consultants in the current interview round and junior doctors themselves. That would be the wrong thing to do, which is why we are not going to do it.

Norman Lamb: Is not the real scandal that the Secretary of State has ploughed on regardless with a fatally flawed system that has caused massive strain to junior doctors and potentially compromised patient care? Does she not concede that it would have been better if she had listened to clinicians and junior doctors right at the startwhen the chaos first emergedand suspended MTAS at that point, rather than having everyone go through such a costly exercise over the past few weeks?
	I have asked previously about cost. What is the cost of the MTAS system, and what is the cost of remedying and handling the crisis that has occurred? The Secretary of State previously referred to a breach of contract that she believes has taken place. Is legal action being taken, and is she considering terminating the contract with Methods, the supplier? Despite her announcement, the selection system for interviews remains unfair. Is she considering the proposal that we make the posts temporary training posts until a fairer system can be introduced? Also, the 1 August problem remains. Is she listening to the concerns raised by senior consultants, who think that there will be chaos on 1 August, as everyone will start their new job on that date?
	Will the Secretary of State clarify what progress is being made on the 15,500 extra interviews? How on earth can there be sufficient time, after those interviews, for families and individuals to relocate for their new job before 1 August? She mentioned that criminal offences are alleged to have been committed. Will she give more details on what criminal offences are being investigated? Finally, is not the truth of the matter that the capitulation was simply the result of the legal action being taken by Remedy UK, or is it just a coincidence that the statement was made yesterdayjust one day before the judicial review application was due to be heard in the High Court? Is it any wonder that a survey published yesterday shows that 90 per cent. of consultants have lost confidence in the Secretary of State?

Patricia Hewitt: The hon. Gentleman says, once again, that we should have just abandoned the whole system at the outset. That was the first possibility that we and the review group considered. Far from ignoring the views of doctors and consultants, we listened to them by working directly with the royal colleges and the British Medical Association, including its junior doctor representatives, through the review group. I remind him that on 4 April the review group said that it had looked seriously at
	all of the options available, including a full and detailed analysis of pulling out of the current selection process completely. In the end
	I remind the hon. Gentleman that these are the words of the review group on 4 April
	it was simply not a credible option. It would be impossible to place the best candidates in posts and fulfil the service needs in time for August using the old system of recruitment. We believe we have come up with the best available solution for England.
	The group believed that at the time. I endorsed its view and I continue to do so, and that is why we will certainly not abandon the present system. I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman is continuing on that track. As I just said to him, if we did abandon it, we would be throwing away the thousands of hours of work and effort that junior doctors and consultants have put into the tens of thousands of interviews that have taken place, and that are still taking place. Those interviews will lead to job offers being made from next week, and to posts being filled.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about the cost. The cost in 2006-07 of the online MTAS system, including set-up costs, is 1.9 million. That is for the UK as a whole, and it was therefore funded by all four UK Health Departments in proportion. In each subsequent financial year of the contract, the costs will be less than that, although we will, of course, want to take account of any recommendations made by the review led by Sir John Tooke on the use of MTAS for future recruitment rounds. As for the costs of the changes that had to be made this year, it is not yet possible to estimate them; we will do so in due course.
	The hon. Gentleman asked about temporary posts and the changeover date of 1 August. As I have said before, that changeover date of 1 August has always applied to most junior and trainee doctor rotations, so it is not a new challenge for NHS hospitals to ensure that they have the necessary staff in place, and that the care of patients is properly maintained. Perhaps I could draw his attention to what Dame Carol Black has said on the subject:
	It isn't true to say that patient care will be put at risk. Delivering patient care is a team effort and all consultants who conduct interviews will have ensured that their services are covered.
	That was said in relation to the current additional interviews. She continued:
	A much greater risk to patient safety would be not to have doctors in place on the 1st August.
	We are now working with the service, as I have said, to ensure that the doctors are in place to care for patients, and that trainees who have not accepted or been made a job offer in round one are properly supported and are not left high and dry; of course, we will not allow that. Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked about details of potential criminal offences. Of course, I am not in a position to say anything more on that subject, and I am surprised that he asked.

Alasdair McDonnell: Would the Secretary of State care to expand on her comments on proper support? That is the crux of how we take the issue forward. It is fine for the people who get a job in round onehopefully, they will know whether they have got a job sooner, rather than laterbut my concern is about the other people involved. Often, a couple of trainee doctors will live together. They may be married, or they may not, and they might have children. They may get jobs at different ends of the country, and the children would have to be uprooted from their schools. That is the human dimension of the problem. It is important that proper support measures are put in place, and that all the junior doctors who are not successful in round one know that those measures are in place, so that we can ensure that people continue to have the talent and skills to provide for the health service. Will the Secretary of State expand on the subject of proper support, and tell us how the people affected will be properly supported and provided with jobs?

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend raises an extremely important point, and it is precisely on those issues that the review group, the Department of Health and Ministers are currently concentrating. First, the important point to stress is that junior doctors, in making their applications and choosing their first preference, will have taken account of where they, their families and sometimes their partners will want to be, and that of course will guide not only the offers that may be made, but also the acceptance of those offers. As I have already indicated, we anticipate that those offers will start being made next week, and the round one process, in which offers are made and junior doctors accept them, should be completed before the end of June.
	Of course, as I have said before, we need, value and want the skills and dedication of junior doctors in the NHS, and we want them to continue to care for patients in the way that they already do. That is why we will ensure that they get proper support, are not left high and dry, and can continue in appropriate employment while they apply for further training opportunities, which, as I have said, will be available beyond round one. We will also ensure that the service continues to have all the doctors available to it that it needs if it is to continue to care for patients in the excellent way that has led, as my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister just said, to more than nine out of 10 patients rating their care in hospital as good, very good or excellent in an independent survey. That is a tribute to all the doctors and other professionals in the health service, including our junior doctors.

Peter Bottomley: How many of the 33,000 applicants have been judged eligible? Mr. Speaker, the House is grateful to you and to my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) for ensuring that the question was asked today, and to the Secretary of State for giving some answers, but the matter goes deeper than that; she and her colleagues are responsible for making the best of the situation that we are now in.
	When the Prime Minister returns, will he and the Secretary of State get together with Dr. Richard Marks, the London anaesthetist who thinks that a changeover for everybody on 1 August is not sensible, and Dr. Gordon Caldwell of Worthing, who since the autumn has been offering suggestions on how to make things better? Will she discuss with that groupand perhaps even with the Liberal and Tory spokesmen, toowhether it is sensible for the run-through grades to start on 1 August, given the current unfairness and lack of equality of opportunity?
	Will the Secretary of State also discuss the problem in the present systemI do not mean the computer systemwhich means that a PhD, the result of three years of relevant work, is judged to be no more important than a 150-word essay on leadership on the application forms?

Patricia Hewitt: As I have previously told the House, there are 34,415 applicants UK-wide in the MTAS system, and 32,649 of them are eligible. Of that total, about 30,000 are already working in the NHS, whether in training posts or in non-training posts. That is why, as I stressed to the hon. Gentleman and the House on previous occasions, the NHS will continue to need those jobs and those doctors, even though not all, by definition, will be able to be in training posts.
	On the issue of 1 August, I have already referred to Dame Carol Black, the work of the review group and the reasons why it has been generally agreed through the review group's leadership that we need to fill as many posts as we properly can for 1 August. That is what will happen through round one, although not all the jobs will be filled.
	The hon. Gentleman referred specifically to two doctors who had particular proposals to make in relation to 1 August. If he could pass those proposals or the doctors' details to me, we could follow up directly with them and seek their advice on it. I will ensure that it is brought to the attention of my colleagues and the review group.

Jeremy Corbyn: The Secretary of State will be aware of the tremendous stress caused by the process to young doctors, who have been through a long period of training at great public expense and want to contribute to the health care of the entire community. I have met groups in my constituency who are very stressed by it and worried about the future. Can she offer any assurance as to how many of those junior doctors, who have completed a long period of training and worked very hard, will be unemployed at the end of the process? To me, the idea of unemployed doctors, when there is such enormous health need, is unthinkable.

Patricia Hewitt: My hon. Friend is right to speak about the stress that has been caused to junior doctors and their families. I have talked to and corresponded with a large number of them, so I have seen that directly, although it is worth bearing it in mind that the old system which Modernising Medical Careers is replacing was thoroughly unsatisfactory, hugely stressful to junior doctors, and on top of that required them to go through multiple applications in different formats, with no national principles guidance and no consistency or transparency at all. We need to bear in mind the enormous problems that led people to believe that we needed a completely different approach to medical training. Of course the stress exists. That is why we are doing everything possible to ensure that round one is successfully completed and that further training opportunities are then made available and people recruited to those jobs, but supported through the recruitment process.
	My hon. Friend mentioned unemployment. I come back to the point that of the 32,000 or so eligible applicants across the UK, over 30,000 are already working in the NHS in training places or, in around 8,000 or so cases, non-training jobs. All those jobs will continue to be needed. What we have to do and are doing is ensuring that applicants and other doctors are matched to the available training posts and the other jobs in a way that is fair to all those applicants, but also right for patients.

Michael Penning: Many of us in the House as Members of Parliament and as members of the Health Committee, on which I have the honour of serving, have been contacted by doctors who are desperate for progression in their training programme. Although the Secretary of State says that the previous system was not perfect, it was not a disaster and a crisis like the one that she has brought on the NHS. I reiterate what 99.9 per cent. of those who contacted us saidactually, I have not found a single doctor who has not saidresign, resign now, take responsibility for the disaster and go.

Patricia Hewitt: The substantive points have all been discussed at length in the House on this and other occasions.

Michael Penning: Resign.

Patricia Hewitt: On responsibility, when something like this goes wrong and when there are real problems in the implementation of an agreed policy, I think there are two things that a Minister should do: apologise and take responsibility for sorting it out, and I am doing both.

David Taylor: It is to be hoped that the MTAS affair will cool the passionate relationship that has existed between the Department of Health and the private sector IT industry. Can the Secretary of State respond to a point that is being made by the Opposition? They say that a substantial number of doctors will disappear overseas. What proportion of the 33,000 eligible applicants are of overseas origin?

Patricia Hewitt: A significant number of the applicants are of overseas origin, many from the Indian sub-continent, including many in my own city, Leicester. Many of them have been working in the NHS for many, many years in non-training posts. What the new system has provided is an opportunity for those who wish to do so to apply for training posts where they will be considered, like every other applicant, on their merit. We should recognise that because the NHS in the past never trained enough doctors to meet the need of the service and of patients, something for which Conservative Members might care to take responsibility, the NHS has always depended on large numbers of doctors, nurses and other professionals from overseas to help care for patients. We should pay tribute to their dedication, along with the dedication of all the other junior doctors and professionals in the NHS.

Nicholas Winterton: I am sure the Secretary of State is aware that there have been more statements and urgent questions on this subject than virtually anything else in recent times. That indicates the seriousness with which the House views the subject, as do many of our constituents, many of whom are junior doctors and are writing to us expressing their concern about their future and their families, and whether they can make a positive contribution to the national health service. I am not after resignations and I do not seek to make vast political points across the House. Can the Secretary of State tell us today that the difficulties that have been encountered by junior doctors in respect of their future career have now been overcome and that the problem is solved?

Patricia Hewitt: We are solving the problems, but precisely because this is a matter of great concern to junior doctors and many other people, I have undertaken to keep the House up to date. That is the right thing to do and I do not think the hon. Gentleman is complaining about the number of statements that that requires. The matter has to be sorted out step by step, and the first priority was to sort out round one and ensure that every applicant gets at least one interview and is fairly considered for a post. That is drawing towards completion as the job offers start to be made, probably next week. Then we will move into further recruitment opportunities, as I explained, with proper support for junior doctors through that. Stage by stage the problems are being solved and the system will, I believe, allow junior doctors, who have made such an enormous contribution already and done so much work, to continue making that positive contribution to the NHS that they want and we want.

Rosie Cooper: As the ex-chair of a hospital under both a Tory and a Labour Administration, I can honestly say that the time of junior doctor rotation is always difficult and, yes, this year it is more difficult than ever. Will my right hon. Friend please comment on the BMA's view that to abandon the process now would be disastrous for everybody concerned? Will she also say what role the BMA and the royal colleges will play in the resolution of the problem? The hon. Member for Macclesfield (Sir Nicholas Winterton) said that he wants resolution, not resignation. Most people out there want to know that junior doctors will be treated properly, that the professionals are involved and are backing the process, that we are dealing with it and that patients' care is paramount. With that assurance, they want resolution, and that would be the end of it for most people.

Patricia Hewitt: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. She makes an important point. The BMA and its junior doctors committee have said that the BMA does not support the judicial review that has been brought by Remedy UK, and that writing off all the tens of thousands of interviews that have already taken place would be disastrous for doctors, for patients and for the NHS. The care and safety of patients, as well as the need to ensure that junior doctors are treated fairly, must be paramount in the process. My hon. Friend also referred to the professional leadership, particularly the leadership that is being shown by the medical royal colleges and by the BMA. They must and will be closely involved in the independent review that will be led by Sir John Tooke, which will enable us to learn lessons, to review Modernising Medical Careers, and to ensure that the principles of MMC, for which there remains widespread support, are properly implemented in future, so that junior doctors and patients are looked after.

John Redwood: Out of the 13,000-plus applicants who will not get training posts, how many will carry on in NHS doctor jobs, and therefore, by deduction, how many will either go abroad, be unemployed or have to seek other kinds of work? That is the figure that people are interested in if they do not want to see that talent wasted for the NHS.

Patricia Hewitt: As I have said before, over 30,000the overwhelming majorityof eligible applicants are already working within the NHS, some in training posts, some in non-training posts. All of those jobs will continue to be needed. Therefore, there is no reason at all why junior doctors need to abandon the NHS and their hopes and aspirations within it, because the jobs are there and the doctors are needed. Over the last 12 months the NHS has employed 3,500 more doctors than it was doing even 12 months ago, and there are about 35,000 more than we inherited from the right hon. Gentleman's Government. So there are more doctors and there is better care for patients, and as we work through the process and the problems we will match the doctors and the trainees to the posts and the needs of the service and the patients.

Anne Milton: The Secretary of State has said that she is keen to take responsibility for sorting out the fiasco, and I know that the junior doctors in my constituency will be relieved to hear that because without a doubt they want resolution, but they and my constituents want to know who was responsible for it. If it was not the Secretary of State, who was it?

Patricia Hewitt: We have talked on previous occasions about the many years of consultation and engagement that led up to the introduction of Modernising Medical Careers, the successful introduction of the foundation programme starting in 2005, to which the hon. Lady did not refer, and the real problems of implementation in what was always going to be a difficult transition year. We need to learn the lessons from that and we will do so through the Sir John Tooke review. In the meantime, I take full responsibility for sorting out the problem, and that is what we are doing.

Crispin Blunt: On the issue of the availability of care in hospitals on 1, 2 and 3 August when the junior doctors begin their induction training, the right hon. Lady during a previous urgent question said that she had commissioned advice in response to questions from me. Has she had that advice, and if so, will she place it in the Library of the House?
	However, I have to say to the right hon. Lady and to the Minister of State, her right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, Central (Ms Winterton), that there are no excuses here. If I as a constituency Member of Parliament was being invited into my local hospital by the junior doctors to hear a presentation by the doctor on the BMA's junior doctors committee about the state of this matter in October, and I then tabled parliamentary questions that were answered by Ministers in October and November, Ministers have nowhere to hide from the responsibility for this utter fiasco. Why will they not take the honourable option?

Patricia Hewitt: On the issue of 1 August, which we have discussed before, not all doctors in training will change jobs on the same date at the beginning of August. Therefore, arrangements for this year will to a great extent reflect current practice. As has already been said, hospitals are very used to the fact that a number of doctors do change their rotation in early August and they make appropriate arrangements to ensure that patient care, and above all patient safety, are not jeopardised as a result.
	Let me say yet again, if I need to, that I take responsibility for this. I have apologised because that is the least that junior doctors deserve given the distress that they have been subjected to, and we are all now focusing on sorting out the problems and ensuring that junior doctors are treated fairly and that patients continue to receive excellent care.

Points of Order

David Winnick: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I accept entirely that it is up to Members to mobilise support for or against a private Member's Bill. That has been the long tradition in the House. But as you, like your predecessors, are the defender of Back Benchers, I want to bring to your attention the fact that it becomes very difficult to oppose, as I do, the Freedom of Information (Amendment) Bill, which will come before the House on Friday and which will exempt Parliament from the Freedom of Information Act 2000, when we find that the usual channelsto use a phraseare mobilising support for that measure. I do not for one moment suggest that that in itself is unparliamentary, but it means that all the machinery of the Government and to some extent the Opposition is being mobilised in favour of a private Member's Bill, which places those of us who are opposed to it at a grave disadvantage. I understand, for example, that Parliamentary Private Secretaries are almost on a three-line Whip, although some have opposed coming in

Mr. Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman has been here a long time. In fact, he used to help me and give me advice on matters. I can only say that he is right to say that I am here to defend Back Benchers, and on Friday everyone will get a voice in this Chamber. I cannot get involved in what is happening behind the scenes.

Tony Baldry: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I have been fortunate to be in the House under three Speakers: Mr. Speaker Weatherill, whose passing we mourn, Madam Speaker Boothroyd and yourself, and it has been a role of all Speakers to protect the House, and that means protecting the House from being treated discourteously by Ministers. For a number of weeks, I tabled a straightforward question to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government asking how many accredited domestic energy assessors and home inspectors there are in each local authority area, region and city in England and Wales. Every week I got the answer that it would be answered shortly. It was only following the intervention of the Leader of House after I raised the matter in business questions that I eventually got an answer that did not seek to disaggregate out home energy inspectors from domestic energy assessors, and clearly did not seek to distinguish between those who are still in training and those who had passed the necessary examinations, but concluded with the words:
	We do not expect assessors to work within local authority boundaries, as they will work largely by regionin some parts of the country, assessors will work across more than one region.[ Official Report, 8 May 2007; Vol. 460, c. 124W.]
	So the Minister for Housing and Planning was seeking to suggest that she could not answer the question by way of local authority because domestic energy assessors were going to work by region.
	I immediately tabled another named-day question for answer on Monday, pursuant to the answer of 8 May

Mr. Speaker: Order. I cannot allow the hon. Gentleman to go through his diary in relation to the tabling of written questions. Courtesy is very important

Tony Baldry: I was just coming to my main point.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman knows that he has to come to the main point quickly, and he did not, so I have stopped him. Ministers are responsible for their replies and hon. Members are entitled to pursue the matter by way of further questions and Adjournment debates. It sounds to me as if the hon. Gentleman has a good case for an Adjournment debate. There is certainly no shortage of words. However, I have to stop the hon. Gentleman there. I have given him some good advice.

Members of Parliament (Employment Disqualification)

Martin Salter: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the regulation of remunerated employment of Members of Parliament; and for connected purposes.
	My Bill seeks to regulate the remunerated employment that Members of Parliament may undertake. In short, it would bring to an end some of the more unacceptable aspects of moonlighting by right hon. and hon. Members, something which the public deplore and which serves only to bring Parliament into disrepute.
	There has been much hand-wringing by political commentators and politicians about the declining esteem in which Parliament is held. We are right to be concerned about the rising cynicism and declining trust in our political institutions. Indeed, the House itself recognised many of those problems in the 2004 report from the Modernisation Committee entitled Connecting Parliament with the Public. The report noted:
	The legitimacy of the House of Commons, as the principal representative body in British democracy, rests upon the support and engagement of the electorate. The decline in political participation and engagement in recent years, as well as in levels of trust in politicians, political parties and the institutions of State should be of concern to every citizen. But it should be of particular concern to the House of Commons. Politicians have always scored low on levels of trust but even so there is a noticeable downward trend, with fewer and fewer people trusting politicians. Lower levels of trust are translating into a disconnection from the institutions of democracy. The fall in election turnout from a post-war high of 84 per cent. in 1950 to 59 per cent.
	a pitiful 59 per cent.
	in 2001 is the most obvious indicator of this decline. Turnout at elections in the UK is now lower than most other European countries.
	The report concluded:
	It serves no-one if we make it difficult for voters to understand what their elected representatives are doing. Too often the impression is given that the House of Commons is a private club run for the benefit of its Members, where members of the public are tolerated only on sufferance.
	Given that the latest Register of Members' Interests, published in March, reveals that a quarter of Members of this House are pursuing parallel careers as company directors, consultants or in the courts, it might have been more appropriate had the Modernisation Committee's report been entitled, Reconnecting MPs with Parliament. With the possible exemption of the cash for questions scandal, it is difficult, in this day and age, to think of anything more likely to reduce the standing of the House of Commons than substantial numbers of MPs drawing a 60,000-a-year salary to carry out a full-time job while moonlighting in the City or elsewhere in order to line their own pockets. If hon. Members are able fully to discharge their duties to their constituents and to Parliament on a part-time basis, then surely it is only right and proper that they should draw only a part-time salary. Funnily enough, I do not see a huge queue of stars from the Register of Members' Interests wanting to go down that particular road.
	As we have heard in this Chamber before, the work of a Member of Parliament has expanded hugely over the past 50 years. Most of us struggle to do all that we have to do in this place and in our constituencies within the confines of a 70-hour week, or sometimes longer. In the 1950s, according to figures provided by the House of Commons post office, the average number of letters received by hon. Members was between 15 and 25 a week. That has exploded to between 300 and 500 individual communications thanks in part to fax, e-mail and the 24/7 media world that we all now inhabit. In order to cope with the increase in workload, there has been, quite rightly, an increase in the resources for MPs offices to enable us to provide a professional full-time service to our constituents. Given that hon. Members on both sides of the House claim the vast majority of those allowances, how then can some of our colleagues continue to treat membership of this House as a part-time occupation?
	I have to admit that I was as sceptical as anyone else when I arrived in this place 10 years ago, particularly after the sleaze of the fag-end years of the last Conservative Administration, when it seemed that MPs were available for hire, but I have largely changed my mind. Like any profession with a mixed ability intake, we have the good, the bad and the indifferent. However, contrary to the view peddled in much of the media, I now have no hesitation in stating that the majority of conscientious Members of the House of Commons are the hardest-working people I have ever met in my lifeand certainly a lot more diligent than the journalists who seek to portray us as lazy, indolent and self-serving.
	That said, we shoot ourselves in the foot somewhat given that 25 per cent. of our number work in other jobs. That would simply not be tolerated by any other employer. In my view, the public, who pay our wages, have a right to expect a full-time commitment from their Member of Parliament. Our salary of 60,000 is more than double the average wage of my constituents, and in many parts of the country it is worth considerably more than that. We cannot expect the public to hold us and this place in any higher esteem until we adopt the same standards of a full day's pay for a full day's work that are expected anywhere else in the modern world. If some hon. Members think that we are underpaid and worth more, they should have the courage to argue the case openly. We should not be sneaking off to the boardrooms to top up our salaries.
	It is probably worth nailing the lie that it is possible to have an extensive portfolio of directorships, consultancies and other outside interests without affecting attendance in the Commons. A quick trawl of the voting records of the top five outside earners for 2005-06 shows that between them they average less than 50 per cent. participation in all Commons Divisions. That compares badly with the average participation rate for all MPs in the same period73 per cent.
	Members may spot a remarkable similarity between my Bill and the Bill proposed by my friend and former colleague Peter Bradley in January 2002. Sadly, the Bradley Bill was lost through lack of timeand Peter Bradley lost his seat through lack of votesbut the arguments for regulating the outside employment of MPs are as strong as they were five years ago. In fact, there has been a slight increase in the number of MPs registering second jobs, largely explained by the increase in the number of Conservative MPs entering the House at the 2005 election. My research reveals that 29 per cent. of current MPs have registered paid employment, representing 55 per cent. of Conservatives, 29 per cent. of Liberal Democrats and 14 per cent. of Labour MPs. Those figures drop to 51 per cent., 24 per cent. and 9 per cent. respectively when the proposed exemptions in my Bill are taken into consideration.
	As with the Bradley Bill, I have tried not to be too prescriptive. There are things we do that are compatible with our public duties. Most of us write articles, contribute to pamphlets on policy development, or undertake useful work on behalf of charities or not-for-profit organisations. We are doing this stuff as part of the day job, and it should not be subject to restriction or regulation, hence the exemptions in the Bill. What I am seeking to achieve is to end the practice of moonlighting in second or third jobsin the case of one hon. Member, 14 other jobsin addition to serving as a Member of Parliament. To quote Peter Bradley,
	The House of Commons has become the epicentre of the black economy. [ Official Report, 15 January 2002; Vol. 378, c. 170.]
	It is time to call a halt to those practices.
	In the time remaining, I would like to examine the performance of the shadow Cabinet. Of the 23 Members of this House who are in the shadow Cabinet, seven are listed as having third jobs. I say third jobs because of course they are constituency MPs as well. Between them, those seven have no less than 32 directorships and consultancies. What is the issue here? I would respectfully suggest that it is the fact that the taxpayer forks out 5 million in Short money to assist Her Majesty's Opposition in discharging their duties. Is it not about time to impose a condition whereby in order to receive that great big dollop of public cash, shadow Cabinet members and Opposition Front Benchers must relinquish any remunerated employment, as is required of all Government Ministers?
	In summary, the Bill offers MPs a choice, which is a choice that many of our constituents would love to be offered: be a member of the board or a Member of Parliament, but you cannot be both.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Martin Salter, Ms Karen Buck, Mrs. Joan Humble, Dr. Alan Whitehead, Dr. Phyllis Starkey, David Wright, Mr. David Drew, Mr. Martin Caton, Colin Burgon, Angela Eagle, Mr. Kevan Jones and Joan Ruddock.

Members of Parliament (employment Disqualification)

Martin Salter accordingly presented a Bill to make provision for the regulation of remunerated employment of Members of Parliament; and for connected purposes: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 15 June, and to be printed [Bill 105].

Housing

Michael Gove: I beg to move.
	That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, praying that the Home Information Pack Regulations 2007 (S.I., 2007, No. 992), dated 23rd March 2007, a copy of which was laid before this House on 29th March, be annulled.
	The home information pack regulations, which are being brought before the House today, are a test case in how not to legislate. They will do nothing to take the strain out of home buying and add only cost and complexity to the housing market.

Claire Curtis-Thomas: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Gove: Not at this point. [Hon. Members: Frit!] All in good time.
	The Labour peer who chaired the House of Lords investigation into the matter said that he could not think of proposals about which so many experts were so strongly critical. His colleague, Lord Tunnicliffe, another Labour peer who led the House of Lords investigation into the regulations, called the Government's case for HIPs
	the most data-free I have ever seen.
	The Consumers Association, once a great supporter of the packs, now argues that, under the Government, they will be
	of little value but great expense to consumersan expensive waste of time.
	Ministers have botched the process from beginning to end. Instead of following the advice of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and listening and learning, they have ploughed on regardless, heedless of their potential damage to the housing market at an acutely delicate time. The change to the way in which we buy and sell our houses is probably the biggest and most jarring intervention in the housing market since Nigel Lawson abolished mortgage interest tax relief. History teaches us that we play politics with people's homes at our peril, but that is just what Ministers are doing.

Nick Raynsford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Gove: All in good time. The housing market has already been hit by a double whammy under the Government. A massive increase in stamp duty and steep rises in mortgage payments have made homes more unaffordable.

Ian Lucas: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Gove: I shall not at this point, but I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that the Bank of England has written a letter to the Chancellor of the Exchequer pointing out that his policies are driving up interest rates and leading to higher inflation than at any other time for more than 10 years.
	There are increased house prices, mortgage rates and stamp duty. At that uniquely nervous time in the market, the Government are introducing a measure that creates the risk of unnecessary turbulence. Let me make Ministers an offer: if they drop all the unnecessary bureaucracy and concentrate on delivering the one good aspect of the packagethe energy performance certificatewe will help them out of their mess. If Ministers press ahead with the folly, the country will know whom to blame for the mess that follows. As Lord Rooker said in another place:
	If it is a failure, we Ministers will carry the can. That is our responsibility.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 20 October 2004; Vol. 665, c. 827.]
	As matters stand, the Government's approach fails three vital tests. The regulations do not command the confidence of the market. They will not speed up transactions or make the process of house buying less stressfulquite the opposite. They have not been prepared in a way in which anyone who is serious about combating climate change would consider adequate.

Ian Lucas: I recall turbulence in the housing market, especially on a morning in 1992, when, as a solicitor, I was representing a client who called on me at 9.30 am to tell me that interest rates had risen to 10 per cent. By 12.30 pm, they had increased to 15 per cent. That is the sort of turbulence that we experienced under a Conservative Government. Is it not rich of the hon. Gentleman to lecture a Labour Government, under whom interest rates are a third of what they were under the Conservatives?

Michael Gove: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his history lesson, but he only underlines my point. Given the importance of the housing market and given that interest rates are increasing, only a Minister in the grip of folly would press ahead with an alteration that will only add to potential turbulence and do nothing to restore confidence.
	On market confidence, we have the benefit of expertise from all who have a responsibility for the health of the housing market, because they have let us know their view of the regulations.

Andrew Miller: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Michael Gove: Not at the moment. Instead of listening to the hon. Gentleman, let us listen to the expertsfor example, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.  [Interruption.] I am about to quote the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyorsif the hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) thinks that it does not know anything about the house buying industry, I shall be interested to hear his speech. The institution states:
	We are concerned about the detrimental impact the introduction of HIPs will have on the market and therefore the economy. We are also concerned at the Government's cavalier approach to the legislative process. We do not believe the current implementation approach will work and in particular we envisage a detrimental effect on first time buyers from rising prices, shortage of supply and abortive cost.
	If I got such a survey, I would worry about pressing ahead with the transaction, but the Government, once again, ignore expert advice.
	The Government also ignore the Law Society. It argues that it does not believe that the regulations
	serve in any way the government's aim of making the home buying process easier and more transparent. They will, in fact, make the process more difficult, much more expensive and remove existing transparency from the marketplace.
	If I were drafting a law, and the country's leading body of lawyers told me that I had got it so badly wrong, I might be tempted to think againbut not the Government. They ignore the surveyors, the lawyers and the Council of Mortgage Lenders, which argues that the Government's approach
	presents a significant threat to the operation of the housing market and has the potential to cause strategic damage to the wider economy.
	Not only the lawyers, surveyors, banks and building societies express concern; everyone who has commented on the proposalsfrom Oxford Economic Forecasting to the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildingshas warned the Government of the danger of pressing ahead without listening and learning.

John Hayes: Will my hon. Friend give way?

Michael Gove: Not at this stageforgive me. As I said, the Consumers Association called the regulations an expensive waste of time. Local authority trading standards officers said that the process will
	add extra costs to the buying and selling of homes
	without making
	the home buying process easier and more transparent.
	What do the Government and their supporters on the Back Benches say? They claim that those groups constitute vested interests.
	Does the Consumers Association have a vested interest? Do trading standards officers have vested interests? All the groups that I have mentioned were explicitly asked by the Government to consider the regulations and invited to be key stakeholders. When they disagreed with the Government, they moved from being stakeholders to those with vested interests. We know the Government's definition of a vested interest: an expert who happens to disagree with them. Junior doctors disagree with the training programmethey have vested interests; generals say that military overstretch is a problemthey have vested interests; teachers say that they are overburdened by bureaucracy and regulationthey have vested interests. If one dares to disagree with the Governmenteven more important, if one dares to know what one is talking aboutthe only thing that the Government can say is, vested interest.

Clive Betts: Surely the hon. Gentleman acknowledges that there are some practical examples of the use of HIPs. Will he point to any occasion on which the horror stories that he identified were realised in places where HIPs have operated?

Michael Gove: Yes. I was on the radio this morning discussing the matter with a solicitor in north-east Wales who was directly responsible for implementing the dry run. He said that there were not enough assessors and that the search facilities that local authorities provided did not have enough capacity to give people HIPs in a timely fashion. He had supported HIPs but changed his mind because of the Government's botched implementation of the scheme and was prepared to go on the radio to make that case.
	The dry runs were not independent, as we were promised by Lord Rooker and the Ministers who were responsible for the policy when it had a chance of being competently executed, but run by people who had a vested interest in the process. Yet even they tell us that they failed.

John Hayes: rose

Michael Gove: I am more than happy to give way to my hon. Friend, who is an expert in such matters.

John Hayes: No more than my hon. Friend, whom I congratulate on his stance and on the service that he has done the House in highlighting the way in which the Government have botched the matter. We warned them that it would go wrong when the Housing Act 2004 was in Committee. My hon. Friend will remember that they cited the Consumers Association at length and prayed it in aid. The reason why the Consumers Association changed its mind is that these are only, in its words, half HIPs: without the home condition report, they are meaningless. Will my hon. Friend take my adviceI say this with appropriate humilityand let the Minister for Housing and Planning off the hook, even at this late stage, by inviting her to withdraw this nonsense and do away with this half-hearted botched policy?

Michael Gove: I could not have put it better myself; my hon. Friend makes the point for me. Just one year ago, when we were debating the matter in Committee with the Minister, she was praising the Consumers Association. It was the source of sweetness and light, wisdom and judgment, because it happened to support her proposal. Then, last July, under pressure from her right hon. Friend the newly appointed Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the Minister was compelled to drop the home condition reports and execute a humiliating U-turn. At that time, the Consumers Association decided that it no longer wished to support the policy. As a result of withdrawing its support, did it remain a valuable source of wisdom and judgment? No, it was reviled and joined the ranks of the vested interests. This listening and learning Government decided to be deaf to consumers just when it mattered. This was not just a U-turn, but hypocrisy at the heart of HIPs.
	We are aware that one body is supportive of the proposals. That, of course, is the Association of Home Information Pack Providers [Laughter.] Does the Association of Home Information Pack Providers count as having a vested interest in the provision of home information packs? Perhaps in due course the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford) will enlighten us on that count. One of the key things about that association is that it has been no slouch in communicating to its members. Indeed, members of the association are already salivating at the prospect of the extra cash that they are going to make out of the poor consumer. In this week's  Mortgage Strategy, one of its members was writing under the headline, Let's make some money out of HIPs. As far as they are concerned, this is a lucrative opportunity to fleece the consumera lucrative opportunity created by the Government who have failed the consumer.

John Redwood: On that very point, it is not only that there will be expenses at the beginning of the process and not enough people to produce the packs. Is it not also the case that if a house or flat does not sell quickly, people will have to pay all over again to renew the informationand still with no guarantee that they will get a sale?

Michael Gove: My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The whole HIP package leads to an unnecessary duplication of costs.

Bob Neill: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government's stance is hypocritical? They hold themselves out as encouraging home ownership, yet HIPs will be an additional obstacle to first-time buyers in particular, because they will certainly be required to get a structural survey. A HIP will be of no value to them, because they will not have a track record with the mortgage lender. If we add in stamp duty, all that will make it harder for peopleparticularly people in London and the south-east such as my constituentsto get started on the housing market.

Michael Gove: My hon. Friend makes a very good point. When home information packs were originally introduced, they were sold to us as helping the first-time buyer and relieving that buyer of the obligation or requirement to have a valuation or survey. As matters stand, they do not help first-time buyers in any way at all: indeed, first-time buyers will still require a valuation and a survey and will still have to pay for the additional document, while nothing will be done to reduce the risk of gazumping.

Nick Raynsford: rose

Michael Gove: I happily give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

Nick Raynsford: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way at last. Will he acknowledge that 1 million is lost every day by members of the public through abortive costssurvey costs, searches and other costs incurredbecause one in four transactions fall through? Will he tell us what he will do to address that gross inefficiency in the present arrangements that is working against the public interest?

Michael Gove: I am always interested to hear what the right hon. Gentleman has to say, as he is a figure of considerable expertise. However, it is a source of regret to me that he did not declare his interest in making his intervention.

Nick Raynsford: I will declare it later.

Michael Gove: I look forward to that. I appreciate that the right hon. Gentleman, as well as bringing expertise [Interruption.]

Claire Curtis-Thomas: On a point of order, Mr. Deputy Speaker. Will you confirm that it is not necessary to declare one's interest in an intervention?  [Interruption.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. These are serious matters. I think that hon. Members can be relied upon to declare their interests at the appropriate time.

Michael Gove: I am grateful, Mr. Deputy Speaker. As we know, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich is a figure not just of expertise but of dignity. He respects the rules of the House and I am sure that he will be grateful to me for reminding the House that he is the director of a firm that produces home information packs. As a right hon. Gentleman with expertise in that area, he will also know that home information packs do absolutely nothing to speed the home buying and selling process and nothing to remove the risks associated with surveys and valuations.
	What home information packs do, however, is help one person: the Chancellor of the Exchequer. VAT will be levied at 17.5 per cent. on every home information pack, which will be sold at an estimated cost of anything between 500 and 1,000. That is VAT on documents either on which VAT was not levied beforehand or which were not required before this legislation. It is a significant tax take for this Governmentas if the home buyer was not milked enough with stamp duty and council tax. It takes the particular devilish ingenuity of this Chancellor to come up with a new tax on the home buyer and home sellera tax that is likely to raise millions while doing nothing to help the housing market at a vulnerable time.

Nick Raynsford: rose

Michael Gove: I am not giving way again, as the right hon. Gentleman has signalled that he is anxious to speak later.
	We know that the test of market competence has been failed. I have run through every group that takes responsibility for the health of the housing market and they are all opposed to these regulations. However, what of the secondary test? Will these regulations speed up transactions and make them less stressful? Will they end gazumping, as we were once told that they would? Every expert opinion, as we have heard, says no. Why? That is because under these regulations, before anyone can even market their property, they will need to assemble a bundle of documents, which it will be no easy business to get in place in time. Let us take the requirement to have local authority searches. We know that there is a wild variation in the cost and speed with which those documents are provided. We also know from the limited dry runs of HIPs which the Government have so far allowed that local authorities are simply not equipped to provide the searches required in the time required to allow properties to be marketed.
	One of the largest companies in the business of providing search material is MDA SearchFlow. As it has explained:
	In the Dry Run areas the search market moved from 40 per cent. of the searches being personal to 100 per cent. of the searches being personal. This has caused significant delays as local authorities have struggled and ultimately failed to cope.
	The managing director goes on to warn:
	There is no way that all of the 2 million odd personal searches required can be facilitated by the local authorities... The Government's proposals to solve this problem are wholly inept. The market will be chaotic.
	That is from a company that supports HIPs, yet it believes that the Government's execution has been comprehensively botched. If sellers cannot get the searches done in time, properties cannot be marketed, so sellers will be frustrated and buyers will see the supply of housing even further constrained. At a time when the supply of housing is drying up and when housing supply is one of the key problems in the housing market, we will have a slower and less responsive marketnot to mention a market with more costs.

Paul Farrelly: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that where responsibility to gain these searches is transferred to the seller, the burden on local authorities will reduce? There will be one seller rather than two, three, four or sometimes umpteen buyers doing these searches.

Michael Gove: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for making that point, because it shows that he completely misunderstands what will actually happen. At the moment, as the experts have pointed out, local authorities are simply not equipped to meet the demand for personal searches, but more than that, there will be additional demand for them. As the Law Society has explained, many buyers will be advised not to accept the personal searches supplied by sellers. The law of caveat emptor applies in house purchases. In many cases, buyers will look at the document supplied and their solicitor will tell them that they cannot be certain that it is not shoddy or partial or inadequate. They might advise them to commission their own searches, so there will potentially be twice the number of searches commissioned, additional costs throughout the process and additional complications. The Law Society has told us that; when solicitors were surveyed, more than two thirds said that the process envisaged by the Government would be inadequate for their clients.

Adrian Bailey: I have been following the hon. Gentleman's arguments, and I am finding them rather contradictory. On the one hand, he is saying that the obligation to provide HIPs will result in the housing market drying up because people will refuse to put their houses on the market. On the other hand, he is saying that the overwhelming number of searches that will be needed will throttle local authority bureaucracies. How does he reconcile those two points?

Michael Gove: I reconcile them using a process called logic, with which the hon. Gentleman might be unfamiliar. It is because it is so difficult to get searches that the number of properties on the market will dry up. That point has been made by every expert body that knows anything about the housing market. The pipeline will be narrowed, and supply will be constrained. It is a matter not only of logic but of economics, and I would be happy to go through both processes with the hon. Gentleman any time he likes.
	The Government have failed not only on searches but on the most crucial test of all: seriousness about the environment and climate change. Their record on the environment is patchy at best. Ministers in the Department for Communities and Local Government have recently been proclaiming their green credentials. How recently? I have been reading the speeches of the Minister for Housing and Planning on her website, and very instructive and entertaining they are too. From the moment she was appointed to her present responsibilities, however, there has been scarcely a mention of the environment. There was support for more housing and for more regulation, but nothing on the environment before December 2005. I am sure that hon. Members will remember what happened at that time. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) became leader of the Conservative party and put the environment at the heart of our campaigning. After December 2005, what was there on the Minister's website? There was silence until May 2006, just two weeks after my right hon. Friend had secured 40 per cent. of the vote in the local elections. The Minister then suddenly emerged from her purdah, her self-imposed silence, to make her first speech as a Minister for five months. To whom? To the Green Alliance.
	When we campaigned with the message Vote blue, go green, we had no idea that the Minister would take that message to heart. Now, as a new convert to Cameron conservatism, she is talking about building eco-homes. Let me remind her that, as the Economic Secretary to the Treasury pointed out in Committee yesterday, no zero carbon homes have been built so far, and the number qualifying for zero stamp duty on the basis of zero carbon in the years ahead will beas he said in answer to a parliamentary questionnegligible.
	Ten years in office, and no progress on the environment. Yet as soon as my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney was elected leader of the Conservative party, Ministers were galvanised into greenery. Just imagine what we could do for the environment if we were actually in power [ Laughter. ] We would certainly take the provision of energy performance certificates seriously, unlike this Government and their Back Benchers, who seem to regard the environment as a subject for hilarity. I am glad that they are laughing at their own record. There will be plenty of opportunity for them to weep when the voters pass their verdict on it at the general election in a couple of years' time.
	If the Government were serious about energy efficiency they would have put the people in place to carry out the energy inspections that are at the heart of the provisions on energy performance certificates, but once again, the Minister and her Department have failed to listen and learn. A year ago, we said that there were not enough people in place, but the Government said that they would get the 7,500 inspectors that they needed; it would be all right on the night. A month ago, however, they revised that figure down and said that they would need only 2,500. Why the sudden reduction? We asked two weeks ago how many inspectors were fully trained and accredited, and we were given the answer at 5 o'clock on the Friday of the May bank holiday weekend: not one domestic energy assessor had passed the test and been accredited. With less than four weeks to go before the implementation of what the Minister describes as a key policy to combat climate change, not one of the 2,500or 7,500; which is it?qualified, accredited inspectors is ready to respond. How does the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly) explain that?

Paul Farrelly: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. He must have seen me straining at the leash. I am sure that the House would appreciate hearing not only about what he and his colleagues started to say 12 months ago, but about what the Conservatives did during 18 years in office up to 1997.

Michael Gove: The hon. Gentleman insists on giving us a history lesson. Let me remind him that the first significant international agreement on combating climate change was signed by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard) when he was Environment Secretary. The first world statesman to sound a warning on global climate change was Baroness Thatcher, at the Government Dispatch Box in 1988. We will take no lessons from the Johnny-come-latelies from Staffordshire. There are many fine Members of Parliament in Staffordshire. Some of them, however, need not only a history lesson but an ecology tutorial before they open their mouths again on this subject.
	The Government are now trying to rush through a few more domestic energy assessors who have passed their test and been accredited. Yesterday, however, I was talking to representatives of the largest HIP provider in Britain, Spicer Haart. It is in despair; it has given up on the Government. It said that
	we have only managed to identify sufficient assessors to cover 40 per cent. of our requirements.
	And let us remember that those are people who have not even been accredited; they have only passed their exam. Spicer Haart went on to say that
	given that we have significant managerial and capital resources at our disposal, you can begin to appreciate the scale of the difficulty the industry as a whole has.
	With less than four weeks before HIPs went live, there was not a single person qualified and accredited to give out an EPC. How can that be taking climate change seriously? With less than two weeks to go, the biggest provider of home information packs cannot identify enough people to carry out even half its requirements. How can that be taking climate change seriously?
	If the Government are serious about climate change, why are they not introducing EPCs into the rental and commercial sectors on 1 June? It is because they simply have not laid the necessary foundations, and the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich knows it. This is the Government who say that they favour energy efficient homes, but only last week they were cutting grants to their low carbon building programme, slashing spending on solar energy by 80 per cent. and hacking back support for wind and other renewables by 50 per cent.

Eric Pickles: That's not very good.

Michael Gove: It certainly is not.
	The way in which the Government are trying to use HIPs to prop up their faulty green credentials has been exposed by no less than the Cabinet Office and its Better Regulation Commission, which said that the regulations were
	ill considered regulatory responses to the climate change challenge,
	and that Ministers were
	using climate change as a justification for measures which have other motivations.
	The Government are using energy performance certificates as a fig leafa piece of greenery deployed to cover their massive embarrassmentbut no one is convinced. Let me offer to save them further embarrassment. If they will ditch home information packsthat is the motion under debate todaywe will help them to ensure that energy performance certificates work. After all, Ministers discovered greenery only after the Conservatives showed them the way. The truth is that the regulations will add cost and complexity to the housing market, when what we need is more supply and economic stability. In the interest of keeping the housing market healthy, I ask the House to throw out once and for all these botched, bungled and broken-backed regulations.

Yvette Cooper: The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) has entertained usand, of course, himselfin his usual way this afternoon. The debate is on the HIP regulations and energy performance certificates, but hon. Members could be forgiven for thinking that it was on something else entirely, having listened to such a huge amount of nonsense and misinformation about our sensible and practical proposals.
	The main document in the home information packthe only new document that is being added to the processis the energy performance certificate. The certificates will give people's homes an energy rating for the first time. That is like a fridge rating for the home that they are hoping to buy. We get such information on our washing machines, our fridges and our dishwashers, and it is high time that we got it on our homes.
	The threat of climate change is real and urgent, and 27 per cent. of our carbon emissions comes from our homes. How can people be expected to make the necessary improvements if they do not have proper information about what is needed to make a difference? How many of us have any idea about the lagging in the loft, when we are looking for a home to buy? How many of us have any idea whether a home has cavity walls, or even know what a cavity wall is? This year, people will get that kind of information in energy performance certificates for the first time. That will make it possible for people to think about proper energy efficiency improvements to their homes.
	As for the impact of fridge ratings, if we look at all the white goods in Comet and Currys, we see that the overwhelming majority now have A ratings. The provision of that information has had an impact on the market and on the way in which people behave. The energy performance certificates go further: they will give people not only the rating on their home but information on what they can do about itwhat their fuel bills are likely to be and how they can cut them, and how they can cut their carbon emissions.

Mark Prisk: The Minister makes an analogy with the consumer. On that basis, why has the Consumers Association described her proposals as
	a useless but very expensive waste of time?
	Does she not recognise that what was originally a half-baked idea is now barely lukewarm?

Yvette Cooper: Certainly, Which? wanted us to go further and to introduce a home condition report. We agree with Which? that the home condition report could be valuable and could have a big impact on the housing market. It was not practical to introduce home condition reports this summer, but we are continuing trials so that we can support their roll-out as they are valuable. Members need to recognise that energy performance certificates are valuable. They do not exist at the moment, and it is right to include them in estate agents' particulars. The energy ratings on homes should be displayed in estate agents' windows, just as the energy ratings of white goods are displayed in Comet.

Bob Neill: So why does the Better Regulation Commission point out that the EU directive on which the Minister has relied refers only to the need for a certificate at the point of sale or letting rather than marketing, and that the Government have produced no evidence to justify going beyond the requirements of the directive, adding costs to the housing market? Why do the Government seem to know better than the Better Regulation Commission?

Yvette Cooper: The Better Regulation Commission wants to water down energy performance certificates. It takes the view that less information should be provided. The information should be provided, however, as part of estate agents' particulars. Just as it is provided for people who browse around fridge shops, it should be provided for people browsing around estate agents. People ought to have such important information at a time when it will make a difference to them.

Andrew Murrison: Can the Minister not understand the big difference between a fridge and some of the ancient housing stock that characterises constituencies such as mine? Such homes do not have cavity wall insulation. What will she say to my constituents who simply do not understand how the tick-box EPCs will help them?

Yvette Cooper: The hon. Gentleman is right: there is a big difference between a fridge and a house. Homes are responsible for 27 per cent. of our carbon emissions. They are the biggest investment that most of us will make in our lives; their running costs are considerably higher than those of fridges; and if the information is provided for a fridge, it ought to be provided for a home. The issue is a basic one of giving proper information that will help consumers to take decisions to improve the energy efficiency of their homes, and help them cut carbon emissions and their fuel bills.
	According to the Energy Saving Trust, homeowners could save up to 300 on their fuel bills every year if they act on basic recommendations about their homes. Many will also be able to get grants of 100 to 300 from their new energy supplier, linked to the measures in the energy performance certificate. Some will be able to get much larger grants through other programmes. Companies are now developing green loans and mortgages to be linked to EPCs. The measures in the EPCs could help to cut carbon emissions by nearly 1 million tonnes a year. That is why WWF, Friends of the Earth, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and a series of different organisations are supporting those measures.
	The remaining elements of HIPs are the legal and search documents that one already needs when buying and selling a home, but they will be gathered at the beginning rather than the end of the process, to speed things up and improve competition. For many of us, buying and selling a home is a baffling process. There can be huge delays between offer and exchange. In complex chains, that can mean that sales fall through. Most people will struggle to keep track of what services they are getting and paying for. HIPs will make the process much clearer and faster. In many other industries, competition, new technology and rising customer expectations have lowered prices, increased transparency and speeded up transactions. Importantly, however, that has not happened to the process of buying and selling a home. In fact, the move from offer to exchange takes longer even than 10 years ago, and in many areas where house prices have doubled, for example, so have estate agents' fees.

Paul Farrelly: I accept that HIPs might bring some extra upfront costs, particularly with regard to producing the energy performance certificate, but that might lead to savings and people might think it a price worth paying, given our commitments on climate change. Does my hon. Friend agree, however, that the rest of the packs will result in savings through the elimination of duplication? Those savings will be shared with sellers, because most sellers are buyers, too. That point is ably made today in  The Guardian, by my former colleague, Julia Finch, who presents a much more balanced opinion than the Johnny-come-later from Surrey, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who used to pontificateand still doesfor  The Times.

Yvette Cooper: My hon. Friend is right to say that there will be savings throughout the process. He also refers to upfront costs, and many providers are already saying that they would charge at the end of the process, not at the beginning, and that they would offer no-sale, no-fee deals. A couple have said that they would provide HIPs for free. As he is right to point out, most of us buy and sell a home at the same time, so the transfer of costs from the buyer to the seller will not make any odds to us. The people who will really gain will be first-time buyers. Currently, if a sale falls through, they might have to pay for searches on a series of different properties. In future, they will get that information for free. It is right that we should help first-time buyers in that way.

Anne Main: rose

John Redwood: rose

John Hayes: rose

Yvette Cooper: I am inundated with requests for interventions. I will give way first to the hon. Member for St. Albans (Anne Main).

Anne Main: On costs and savings for sellers and buyers, does the Minister agree that the cost for sellers of part-equity in a house is disproportionate? According to the HIP providers to whom I have spoken, sellers will have to pay 100 per cent. of the HIP's cost even though they are perhaps selling only 50 per cent. of the equity in a house.

Yvette Cooper: People buying or selling shared equity properties already have to pay transaction costs, estate agents' fees and search fees. All that we are doing is transferring the cost from the buyer to the seller in a way that introduces greater transparency and competition. That competition is already having an impact in bringing costs down. We have seen the cost of searches come down in a series of local authorities 25 local authorities have cut their costs in anticipation of HIPs because they know that, for the first time, the charges and the length of time taken will be transparent to the consumer and to HIP providers. There will be much greater pressure to provide a good service.

John Redwood: Does the Minister not see that if HIPs are so wonderfulif they lead to people making savings on their energy account and speed up transactionsthey will take off naturally, given all this publicity? Why do we not withdraw the mandatory element, and see whether she is right to say that they are helpful? I think that they are unhelpfulthe market will dry up, and they are another tax to go with the swingeing stamp duty and the penal council tax.

Yvette Cooper: The right hon. Gentleman must recognise that the home buying and selling process has not changed properly for a generation. It has not reformed in response to new technology or responded effectively to competition. The Office of Fair Trading, for example, pointed out areas in which price competition was not effective. There is such a lack of transparency and so much complexity that it can be difficult for consumers to be clear about what they are paying for at which stage in the process. HIPs introduce greater transparency and new providers into the market, which is why many current providers are feeling a little anxious and threatened. We take that competition seriously. We want to monitor it and ensure that it is promoted and that it increases, and that consumers see the benefits. I will now take an intervention from the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr. Hayes) and then I want to make progress.

John Hayes: When the hon. Lady debated these matters with us alongside the then Minister for Housing and Planning, the right hon. Member for Streatham (Keith Hill), the plan was altogether more ambitious. Now she tells us that home buyers will not receive information on a number of salient issues. Does she not recognise that people will want to know about flood risk, a history of land contamination, electrical safety and risk of subsidence? There will no reduction in the number of extra surveys that people commission when they buy their homes, because mortgage companies will insist on them. Will the hon. Lady acknowledge that the packs will not improve the lot of buyers, but will clog up the system and will be entirely unhelpful to those who want to purchase homes?

Yvette Cooper: Opposition Members keep contradicting themselves. One minute they want bigger HIPs; the next minute they want no HIPs at all.  [Laughter.] Perhaps some Opposition Members are seeking bigger HIPs.
	We have always said that we think home condition reports will be very valuable. We have also said that we do not think it practicable to introduce them on a mandatory basis this summer, but because we think that they will be valuable we are conducting trials. We have made amendments to HIPs in response to consultation and the results of trials, and we will continue to work on their implementation with stakeholders across the industry.

David Drew: I must declare an interest. I have just sold my father's house, because he has gone into care. He has the good fortune to live in the Bristol area, where a pilot scheme has operated for some time, and I was offered the opportunity to use a home information pack. The process was very transparent, and led to the early sale of my father's house. I do not understand why the experiment is not more widely known about, and why the advantages that the estate agent made so clear to me have not been translated to the rest of the profession. I think that it is very sad. Can my hon. Friend elucidate?

Yvette Cooper: My hon. Friend is right. Advocates of the home information packs that are currently in the market have not often been heard. Their voices have been drowned out by those of a number of organisations representing people in the industry who are anxious about and resistant to change, which is unfortunate. Another hon. Member gave me an e-mail that he was sent by one of his constituents, who has been an estate agent for many years. He wrote that, having spoken to virtually every solicitor and estate agent in Reading and Wokingham, he found they were all ready to proceed with gusto. I believe that many people in the industry expect considerable benefits.
	It is true that there has been opposition from some representative bodiesthe hon. Member for Surrey Heath quoted a fewand that the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors is launching a judicial review. However, we consider the review to be completely groundless, and in any event it concerns energy performance certificates: the institution thinks that the information in them should be provided when it is up to 10 years old. We disagree. The Council of Mortgage Lenders published a detailed report this week containing its assessment of the future of the housing market. So concerned is the council about the impact of HIPs that it does not even mention them. It is also true that other organisations, such as Which?, want to go further, but we think that these are the right measures to introduce this summer.
	Opposition Members have had an opportunity to choose between backing the National Association of Estate Agents and backing Friends of the Earth. They have chosen, and we have seen which side they are really on.
	Energy performance certificates are central to home information packs. We have stressed the importance of energy assessors because we take it very seriously. According to the latest estimates, 2,000 energy assessors will be needed at the beginning of June, rising to 2,500 by the end of the month. More than 2,200 have passed their examinations, and over 3,000 more are in training. Of those, around 1,100 are accredited or their accreditation is currently being processed.

Angela Watkinson: As the Minister may know, the  Daily Mail website claims today that the only reason we have been granted the debate is that the Minister threatened to resign over HIPs. Would she care to comment?

Yvette Cooper: I would caution the hon. Lady over what she should believe in the  Daily Mail. I did not read the  Daily Mail today, but I can assure her that that report is not correct. However, I will go and check. Heaven forbid that I forgot to read the  Daily Mail this morning!

Jessica Morden: I welcome the Minister's comments. Will she ensure that the many people, including constituents of mine, who answered the Government's call for people to train to become self-employed home inspectors and domestic energy assessorsat great expense to themselves, in some casesare not driven out of the market by the dominance of a small number of large HIP providers who are working with estate agents on larger contracts?

Yvette Cooper: We think that competition is very important. Part of the intention behind the reforms is to improve information and transparency and support competition. I assure my hon. Friend that we will closely monitor competition in the market, and think about whether further steps are necessary.
	As for the impact on the housing market, of course it is true that some estate agents have been using the advent of HIPs as a marketing strategy to try to drum up business and increase their share in a tight housing market in May. It would not be surprising if that had an impact on the timing of listings in both May and June, and it may take time for people to get used to the new system. However, listings fluctuate substantially from month to month. A million houses are sold every year, at an average cost of 200,000. Estate agents' fees alone can amount to an average of between 2,000 and 4,000. We do not think it plausible that people will decide not to move house because of an energy performance certificate. That is an absurd assertion by Opposition Members who simply want to cause alarm and convey misinformation that scares people.

Paul Farrelly: We have not only seen such misinformation in the pressas my hon. Friend says, it has been used as a marketing ploy by some of the more unscrupulous agentsbut heard it from Opposition Members. The cries that we hear about the housing market drying up are absurd. That is not constructive opposition; it is merely hysterical opportunism.

Yvette Cooper: My hon. Friend makes an important point. We must look for the real dividing lines in the argument. The central element is the energy performance certificate, which includes additional measures to help improve the way in which the housing market operates.
	The Opposition seek to overturn the HIP regulations, and they seek to stop the introduction of HIPs and energy performance certificates this summer. They say that they support EPCs and measures to improve the energy efficiency of people's homes, but if that is the case, why did the hon. Members for Surrey Heath and for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman) and the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) sign early-day motion 1264, which calls for the overturning of the Energy Performance of Buildings (Certificates and Inspections) (England and Wales) Regulations 2007? Those regulations do not contain measures relating to HIPs, searches or title documents. The only measure that concerns home owners relates to energy performance certificates. The hon. Member for Surrey Heath said that he needed to table the early-day motion to secure the debate. What nonsense! The debate is not about those regulations; it is about the HIP regulations.

Michael Gove: The hon. Lady has been in the House for 10 years. She will be familiar with the workings of the Table Office. We prayed against the Home Information Pack Regulations 2007, which meant that both sets of regulations had to be prayed against. We simply followed the advice of the Table Office to ensure that this debate took place on the Floor of the House.
	The hon. Lady knows from our speeches, statements and letters that we are in favour of energy performance certificates. Will she now withdraw the entirely erroneous and misleading assertion that we are opposed to them, or is she prepared to see her credibility diminish as a consequence?

Yvette Cooper: What utter nonsense. The hon. Gentleman asks for evidence of his opposition to energy performance certificates, and I must tell him that there is plenty of it. The hon. Member for Meriden rose early this morningeven earlier than I didto make clear her hostility to energy performance certificates on GMTV. She objects to them because she does not like the fact that someone will have to carry out energy ratings of people's homes. She said
	the new feature is having energy performance assessors come round and actually look at how your house is put together... so it's a very intrusive measure.
	Perhaps the hon. Lady will explain how she can support energy ratings of homes if she opposes the idea of people going round to those homes to carry them out. How does she think that energy ratings on homes will be done? That provides more evidence of Conservative Members opposing energy performance certificates.
	The hon. Member for Surrey Heath takes a different line. His objection is that we are gold-plating EU regulations. That is true; we are going beyond the minimum requirements for energy performance certificates set out in the EU directive. However, that is not gold-plating; it is green-plating, and we make no apology for that. The European minimum that the hon. Gentleman advocates is that people should be able to use an energy performance certificate if it is up to 10 years old. Well, it is a fat lot of use to a new home buyer to have information on a home's fuel costs and running costs that could be up to eight or nine years old. There will not be a huge impact in respect of how people respond to energy performance certificates if they know that the energy information in them is out of date.
	The fact is that Opposition Members are trying to block energy performance certificates; they are trying to delay them and to water down the information. They are also telling different things to different audiences. On 1 May, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath told the  Daily Express:
	If we can stop them we will.
	On 2 May, he told  The Guardian that
	we shall not use our vote to impede prompt and effective EPC implementation.
	On 4 May, he told the  Daily Mail:
	I hope MPs will put pressure on the Government to go back to the drawing board.
	Why is he not straight with people? The truth is that he does not like energy performance certificates at all.
	The Conservative party's leader claims to care about the environment, but time and again it will not back the practical measures needed to help to cut carbon emissions. The right hon. Member for Witney took a trip to the Arctic, organised by WWF, to demonstrate his commitment to the environment. It was his photo-opportunity to hug a husky. While he was there, he was asked for his top tips for people to go greener. He mentioned bicycling to work and growing vegetables, and he said that some of the steps that we can take to reduce our impact on the environment, such as home insulation, will save us money. He also stated that leadership means doing the right thing not just saying it. Well, the Conservatives should do the right thing now. They should back these measures to bring in environmental improvements. However, they will not back them.
	What do WWF and Friends of the Earth now say about the Conservatives' environmental policy? Let me quote from a letter from them to the Conservatives:
	Your party is currently campaigning for the local elections, under the slogan 'Vote blue, go green'
	That sounds familiar. The letter continues:
	However, we are concerned that by attempting to block the HIPs, you risk scuppering one of the most important pieces of environmental legislation to affect households in recent years.
	We therefore urgently request that you...reassure us that under no circumstances will you allow their introduction...to become a victim of moves by your party to delay the rest of the HIP.
	The huskies have just cocked their legs on the Conservatives' environment policy. If their environment policy were energy rated now it would get a big G. Perhaps that is not the only big G that they will have to reckon with in the next few months.
	The green groups are right: this is a good measure and it should be implemented. The Conservatives should start to back it now.

Andrew Stunell: I was going to start by congratulating the Minister on her measured and emollient response to the debate, but she rather spoilt that plan in the last 30 seconds of her speech.
	The Minister might have acknowledged that this scheme is in a bit of a mess. Those who believed in the whole gospel of compulsory home condition reports, home information packs and energy performance certificates were taken up the aisle by the Secretary of State and have been dumped. It is unsurprising that some of those people are angry and embarrassed, and are shouting, Betrayal. She cannot completely dismiss the fact that Which? and the Law Society, which were supporters of the scheme in its original form, have now backed away and are feeling very despondent about the scheme as it currently stands.
	Those inside the Labour big tent who are still supporters of the scheme in its full-blooded, 1997 manifesto style could at least get some reassurance from the way that things were evolving by thinking that they would have the slimmed down scheme before them with the results of the evaluation of the pilot studies also available and that in this debate they would be able to rebut the challenges and accusations from the Opposition Benches by referring to the detailed results of those studies which would show that all the bad predictions were not justified. However, the pilot studies have not been completed; there has been no proper evaluation and there is no hard evidence of success. The safeguard of those trials producing evidence on which we could take a proper and balanced decisionwhich was much talked about last year when the scheme was debated on several occasions in this Houseis not available. The safeguard has been swept away.
	I want to bring to the attention of the House some of the evidence that Mr. McDonald gave to the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee of the other place. Mr. McDonald appeared on behalf of the Department for Communities and Local Government, and he said that it cannot yet check the pilot studies to find out what savings have been made in transaction times. He said that that was because it would need at least 3,500 transactions to have been completed before it could make that assessment. I was surprised when I read that evidence; I was not surprised by the idea that 3,500 examples would be needed to reach a judgment, but I was astonished that 3,500 transactions had not been conducted so far. The Minister did not deal with the issue of the pilot studies. There was a good reason for that; to have done so would have underlined the embarrassing situation that she is in and the difficulties that the scheme faces.
	The pilot studies were supposed to have started in July last year. They could not start because the regulations were not produced in time. They were supposed to restarthave their second startin October last year. Yet the evidence that Mr. McDonald gave to the Committee was that most of the schemes had not started until January this year and that it was therefore too early to evaluate whether they were performing in accordance with the Minister's predictions.

David Drew: Does not that bear out the fact that there is a problem in that we can have pilotsit will be good to see the evaluation from thembut unless there is also the power to make things mandatory people, will not make the changes that we all want them to make in terms of being sensible and serious about facing up to their climate change responsibilities?

Andrew Stunell: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, which brings me on to another part of the evidence given by Mr. McDonald. That related to whether there should be a voluntary or a compulsory element to the home condition reports. On that, the DepartmentMr. McDonaldwas caught betwixt and between. In one part of his evidence he said that the reason why the Department had changed to a voluntary system for the home condition reports was that it thought that it was right for that to be taken forward by the market, rather than be imposed by regulation. However, he also said that the Department estimated that a negligibly small amount of home condition reports would actually be taken up. On the one hand the Department wanted to rely on the voluntary principle to deliver home condition reports because it thought that the market would suck them in, and on the other hand it accepted that noneor almost nonewould be done. In support of his point of view that the voluntary scheme would not work, Mr. McDonald added that the Law Society had had its own voluntary scheme which it had tried to market in previous years and that it had failed and had to be withdrawn.

John Hayes: It is most useful that the hon. Gentleman has drawn attention to events in the other place, particularly as the Minister said almost nothing about the pilots in her speech. The hon. Gentleman has shown remarkable consistency on the matters under discussionwhich is hard to reconcile with his membership of the Liberal partyso I would be interested to learn if he has come to the conclusion that the pilots were of the wrong scale, or at least, set out on the wrong timetable, because that seems to be the conclusion that most people have drawn from the evidence given to the Lords.

Andrew Stunell: I suppose that a backhanded compliment is better than no compliment at all. I will move on, if I may.
	I want to draw the House's attention to a third aspect of Mr. McDonald's evidence. He was persistently asked what he thought the cost to the consumer would be of the packs in the form that the Secretary of State proposes. After what might in other circumstances be described as some shilly-shallying, he said:
	It could be anything from nothing to several hundred pounds.
	He could provide no evidence that the packs would reduce the transaction timethe whole point of introducing them in the first placehe could not estimate the cost to the consumer, and he had to admit that the voluntary home condition report was going to be a dead letter. It is no wonder that the gloom among the Government has spread in the last few months as this situation has built to its climax.

Bob Neill: The hon. Gentleman is making a valid point. Is it not reinforced by the contrast between the extremely vague and weak evidence given on the Department's behalf, and the very clear evidence on cost given by the Council of Mortgage Lenders? It specifically advised that buyers will still have to commission and pay for valuations and associated surveys, particularly if the loan-to-value ratio of the mortgage is more than 80 per cent.that will affect four in five first-time buyersand if the property is a flat. So that is specific evidence against HIPs, and there has been nothing from the Government to rebut it.

Andrew Stunell: The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point; that certainly is the evidence given by the CML.
	We have tended in this debate to adopt extremely polarised views about home information packs and the associated costs and liabilities. As a Liberal Democrat, I always feel slightly uneasy at aligning myself with the National Association of Estate Agents, and one does have to take some of the criticism with a pinch of salt. Nevertheless, it has to be said that the Minister has failed to show the House any evidence that time will be saved in the overall transaction. There is no evidence on the likely cost imposition on consumers, and there is clearly no chance of home condition surveys catching on.

Adam Afriyie: rose

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: rose

Andrew Stunell: I give way to the hon. Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie).

Adam Afriyie: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way, and I certainly welcome his moderate and emollient tones. The purpose of the pilots is to uncover the evidence, in order to form or modify a policy that the Government of course hope will work by making the market more fluid and contributing to their green goals. Does he therefore share my alarm at the fact that the Government will not hold off on this measure until the evidence is in? That seems bizarre.

Andrew Stunell: The hon. Gentleman makes a very strong point. Back in July of last year, the Government's whole argument was that we should see the pilots come to fruition, which would satisfy our every qualm and concern. That is a perfectly fair starting pointbut not if the scheme is then introduced before the pilot study has been completed, before an evaluation has been made and before a report has been placed before this House.
	In the emollient part of her speech, the Minister said that the pilot studies have in fact influenced the final documentthat changes have been made. If Members take a careful look at the Government's explanatory memorandum, they will see that it details some of the changes that have been made as a consequence of taking account of the first half of the pilot studies. The Government found evidence of changes that need to be made, but they seem to have closed their mind to the possibility that the second half of the pilot studies might equally produce such evidence. Instead of taking time to consider that possibility, they have pitchforked us into these regulations, which could be described as half-formed.

Claire Curtis-Thomas: I am a little confused by some of the hon. Gentleman's comments. He is talking about the introduction of home information packs; I thought that we were here today expressly to talk about the introduction of energy performance certificates.

Michael Gove: Wrong debate and wrong motion.

Claire Curtis-Thomas: That is your view. Will the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) confirm that he is in favour of energy performance certificates, and that he can understand why they would be of particular use to those who are considering purchasing a property and therefore paying its likely running costs after purchase?

Andrew Stunell: Had I not taken the hon. Lady's intervention, I would in any case probably have got to the part of my speech dealing with energy performance certificates, so perhaps I might move on.
	I want to make one more point about the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee hearing. The Committee was very scathing indeed about the regulatory impact assessment, as the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) mentioned. However, at least there is a regulatory impact assessment, be it good or bad, and regardless of whether the arithmetic stands up. However, where is the risk assessment of this project? I begin to wonder whether the Department has a new acronym: the WAAP assessment, which stands for with a wing and a prayer. Before we introduce this scheme, we need some evaluation of the risks of pressing ahead.
	It will not do to say that the scheme is coming in regardless before the pilots have finished, given that the people who will pay the price, literally, are the 1 millionperhaps nearer 2 millionhouseholders who will be buying and selling. Who will carry the risk of this scheme going wrong? It might be a very low risk, and perhaps the Minister will be able to return to the House in a year's time triumphant, but there is a risk. I doubt whether the Minister will carry that risk; it is the 1 million to 2 million householders who will face the extra stress and difficultly. It is they who will take the risk and face the music.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I was late for this debate because I was addressing a conference on HIPs this morning. The 150 surveyors present felt that at the very least, there will be a distortion of the housing market on and around 1 June. The Government proposed HIPs in 1997 but they have not trialled them properly, and they laid the associated major regulations before this House as late as 29 March, thus giving very little time for professionals to get to grips with the details of this far-reaching scheme, which is part of a market worth 250 billion. Is that not reckless?

Andrew Stunell: The Government ought really by now to have learned from what happened last July, when the late issuing of their regulations led to the frustration of the timing of the pilot studies. Like the Irishman, I would not have started from here. It all started to go wrong way back when those regulations were not made available.
	The moment may have come to answer the earlier intervention from the hon. Member for Crosby (Mrs. Curtis-Thomas), who asked about energy performance certificates. If home information packs are, in the words of the Scottish returning officer, to be declared void for want of certainty, it is important not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Energy performance certificates are an extremely useful starting point for raising the awareness of sellers and buyers alike of the energy efficiency of their homes and what they can do about it.
	By way of practical example and to support the Minister in what she saidin the emollient bit of her speechI point out that there are 5 million homes in this country with cavity walls but no cavity wall insulation. Most of the owners of those homes are probably in the situation that I was in until last November, when I unveiled, as MPs do, a warm homes project and met at the unveiling a cavity wall installer. Like me, those homeowners probably assumed that the house that they bought had cavity wall insulation, while not knowing for sure. I asked the cavity wall installer, Is there a simple way of finding out whether my walls have cavity wall insulation? He said, Yes, it takes five minutes. Do you want me to pop round? He came round, drilled a little hole, looked, let me have a look and said, No, you haven't. I have got it now. It cost 250 and it was money well spent.
	Another 5 million households do not have cavity wall insulation and the EPCs will make that explicit to the owners or the next owners of those properties. We need to make energy use by housing transparent and we need purchasers of new houses to take as much notice of the EPC as they do of a smart kitchen or a wood-strip floor in the lounge.

Angela Watkinson: How much confidence does the hon. Gentleman think that consumers can have in the findings of a home inspector who has been on a short course compared with the findings of a professionally qualified surveyor who has been practising for several years?

Andrew Stunell: One has to be careful what one says, even in the House, but one will probably get the former for a third of the cost of the latter and it will be just about as good.
	It is no secret that my party and I want to see a rapid and dramatic improvement in the energy performance of buildings. Indeed, my private Member's Billnow the Sustainable and Secure Buildings Act 2004, which was well before the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) came into anybody's sightsgives Ministers the power to move much more decisively on this important issue than just simply labelling. Labelling is important, but we need to go further. I remind the Minister that she has the powers to go further than she proposes today and my party recently set out a scheme that would assist owners in achieving that on a sensible time scale.
	On the one hand we have militant opposition to anything to do with this project. We saw a wolf in sheep's clothing speak with great eloquence at the outset of this debate, but it is a fact that the Conservative party, whether it knew that it was doing it or not, prayed against both elements, including the EPC. The Liberal Democrats strongly support the EPC. We actually want the Government to go further and faster on that and to see some positive results. Whatever the merits and the theoretical benefits of the scheme in its original form, the Government have dithered and bungled on the HIP project. They should press forward with the EPCs and recognise the rest of the project for the train crash that it has become.

Several hon. Members: rose

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. I remind the House that the prayer is limited to one and a half hours. We must complete consideration by 3 o'clock, but several hon. Members are seeking to catch my eye. Unless contributions are very brief, many people will be disappointed.

Nick Raynsford: At the outset, I wish to draw attention to my declared interests, specifically as chairman of the Construction Industry Council and a director of Hometrack. As I have made clear in previous debates on this subject, I am a strong supporter, and have been for many years, of reform of the house buying and selling process, which is one of the most stressful experiences in most people's lives, is unduly protracted and involves a scandalous level of waste and abortive costs. Only last night, I was talking to someone who had lost 1,000 because a seller had withdrawn after he, the buyer, had committed to expenditure on searches and surveys. That experience is repeated hundreds, if not thousands, of times a day. Every day 1 million is lost in abortive costs. I was very disappointed that the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) simply ignored my question about what the Opposition intended to do about that very real problem.

Andrew Miller: My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. Does he agree with me that the fear of losing money in such a way creates inertia in first-time buyers and would not making this change stimulate the market for them?

Nick Raynsford: I agree with my hon. Friend, but such things take time and I would not expect to see an immediate reaction. Over time, the implementation of the reform will help to instil confidence in the system. The failure of the present system is attributable to the fact that it is inherently unsatisfactory. It requires buyers to make a commitment on what is probably the largest financial transaction of their lives without adequate information on the property that they propose to acquire. That self-evidently absurd way of proceeding could not be justified in any other field of commerce. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) asked why we did not propose EPCs at the point of sale. If he thought about it, he would realise what an absurd proposition that was. It would be absurd to be given an assessment of a fridge's performance only at the point at which one had agreed to buy it, instead of when considering competing models and deciding which is the most energy efficient. That encapsulates the nonsense of the present house buying and selling process and shows why reform is necessary.

Bob Neill: Is not the downside of that the real risk that requiring an EPCwhich is a good idea, and that has always been the view of Conservative Membersup front adds to the seller's risk of abortive costs? Those costs are likely to be passed on to the buyer, so it is not as simple as the right hon. Gentleman makes out.

Nick Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman is wrong. The seller puts the property on the market and commissions the EPC. If there are problems with the property, it may prompt the seller to carry out improvements, because he will know that they will give him a better chance of selling. That may help to achieve some cost-effective improvements in the property, but that is entirely in the seller's hands. Abortive costs will arise only if the seller chooses to withdraw the property from the market, whereas in the example I gave prospective buyers who have commissioned surveys, searches and other reports lose their money for reasons entirely out of their control.

Adrian Bailey: The hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said that the bureaucratic burden on local authorities of the increased number of searches for house sellers would result in the housing market drying up. Given that buyers currently have to get a search on houses they wish to buy and if that purchase falls through other would-be buyers have to have the same search done, does my right hon. Friend agree that the hon. Gentleman's point is illogical?

Nick Raynsford: My hon. Friend makes his point well. I notice that the hon. Member for Surrey Heath did not seem to understand the clear and impeccable logic of my hon. Friend's argument.
	Many of the professional bodies that oppose the introduction of HIPs do very well out of the present system. If searches are made repeatedly by different buyers, the solicitors benefit. When valuations are commissioned by mortgage lenders, they make money on the process each time. In many cases, they make rather a lot of money. If the valuation has to be done repeatedly on the same property, they are not out of pocket. No wonder they like the existing system. Every time a surveyor is commissioned to conduct a valuation or survey, their fees are paid, so they are not in a hurry to promote changes to the system, which involves waste to the consumer and the public. This is, therefore, an issue of public interest.
	I regretted the Government's decision last summer to abandon one of the core elements of the schemethe mandatory home condition reports. That is a fundamental element that will have to be reintroduced and I hope that the Government will recognise that in due course. But I do not believe that we should delay the introduction of HIPs in the hope of getting something better. That would allow the best to be the enemy of the good. We need to get the new arrangements up and running from 1 June and then seek to improve them in due course.

Claire Curtis-Thomas: Like me, my right hon. Friend is concerned about the quality of homes and the safety of individuals. Does he agree that this measure will do much to ensure that the homes that people purchase are safe and efficient, and will enable them to understand that before they make a significant commitment?

Nick Raynsford: My hon. Friend has much experience in this area, and she is right to say that it is all about improving the information available to the public. I personally believe that mandatory home condition reports would have done even more than the present package, but I hope that we will reach that point in due course. I certainly do not want to see any backing away from the implementation of HIPs.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

Nick Raynsford: If I am to make progress as Mr. Deputy Speaker has asked, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that I cannot take any further interventions.
	I do not share the apocalyptic visions of meltdown in the housing market that some of the opponents of HIPs have forecast. They rather remind me of the similar prophecies of doom preceding the introduction of the licensing arrangements in November 2005. On both occasions, the cheerleader was the  Daily Mail, but that newspaper was entirely wrong about the licensing arrangements. The Government held their nerve at that time: I hope that they will do the same now and that they will not be persuaded to do anything other than proceed with a reform that is in the long-term interest of the consumer.
	I want to highlight two specific items very briefly, and the first is the benefit that HIPs will bring to first-time buyers. The Opposition talk about them frequently, but now the House has an opportunity to do something that is unquestionably in their interest. My hon. Friend the Minister for Housing and Planning has made it clear that they will get all the benefits of the HIP at no cost. The Opposition claim to be the friends of first-time buyers, so why are they not welcoming this measure?
	Secondly, on the issue of energy performance certificates: we know that the Government have made real progress in driving up the standards of new homes. When I was a housing Minister, I was proud to be part of the process of ratcheting up part L of the building regulations. The Government have taken that process further, and I applaud that. However, new housing makes up only 0.8 per cent. of the total housing stock each year.

Michael Gove: That is not correct.

Nick Raynsford: If the hon. Gentleman looks back over time, he will find that the rate of addition to the housing stock has been at about 1 per cent. every year for a very long time. If we are serious about taking quick action to improve energy efficiency, we have to tackle the problems in the existing housing stock. The measure that we are discussing is the most effective way to do that, as there is also a lot of evidence that investment to improve energy efficiency is most likely to be carried out when a property changes hands.
	The HIP is the right measure to achieve an improvement that we all recognise as important. I sincerely hope that the House this afternoon will not support the Opposition's entirely opportunistic prayer, but that instead it will vote for a measure that is in the public interest, in both the short and the long term.

Tony Baldry: On occasions, this debate has been fairly rumbustious, largely due to the excellence of the opening speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). However, in the few minutes remaining, I hope that I can take a slightly different approach to the matter. I think that all hon. Members agree that the energy performance certificates are good news. There does not seem to be any dispute about that, so can we take it as a given that everyone wants them, and wants the scheme, when it is implemented, to be a success?
	Like the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), I was a housing Minister. After four years in that job, I can sense when a project is not going to get off the ground. For a number of weeks, I have tabled questions to the Minister for Housing and Planning, asking for details of how many domestic energy assessors and home inspectors there are in each local authority, city and region. Week after week, the response that I got was that the question would be answered shortly. Eventually, I raised the matter with the Leader of the House at last week's business questions, and at last got something of an answer.
	However, I was still not given a number. The answer that I received did not disaggregate home inspectors and domestic energy assessors. Instead, it lumped both together, and it gave no breakdown of how many there were per district. The answer did not even disaggregate those who had qualified and those who were still in training. At the end of last week, the best that the Department could do was to say that the total number of inspectors and assessorsboth fully trained and still in trainingwas something approaching 2,000. The answer went on to say that there was no point in giving a breakdown in terms of local authority, city or region because domestic energy assessors will work on a regional basis. The fact that the assessors will have to drive all over a region, thus increasing carbon emissions, is apparently neither here nor there.
	Not unreasonably, therefore, at the end of last week I tabled a named day question, asking whether the Secretary of State, pursuant to her answer of 8 May, could tell me how many practising domestic energy assessors and home inspectors there are in each region. After all, we are only 15 days away from the implementation of the scheme, so one would have thought that the Department would at least know how many inspectors and assessors there are in each region. What answer did I get to my named day question? I was told that the Secretary of State would answer it shortly.
	Only two reasonable inference can be drawn from the fact that Ministers cannot tell the House how many domestic energy assessors there are in each region. In fact, an extrapolation from the answer that I got last week shows that there may be only 57 qualified inspectors in the north-east, 76 in Wales and 152 in London. That is pretty pathetic, so either Ministers do know the numbers involved and are too embarrassed to tell the House, or they have no idea. In either case, I suggest that it would be in everyone's interest to postpone the scheme for three months, until October.
	I have no idea about the merits of the judicial review being sought by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, but I would be amazed if the single judge who has to make the decision does not give leave for that review to be heard. Moreover, it is fanciful to believe that the High Court could hold a full hearing before 1 June, so that is another layer of uncertainty.
	Ministers must be able, with confidence, to tell the House, the country and everyone involved that there are enough inspectors and domestic energy assessors in every region. They will be doing themselvesand people who believe in energy conservation and going greenno favours if they sleepwalk into a disaster with this scheme. All they have to do is postpone it for three months until theyand the countryare confident that there are enough inspectors and assessors. If they do not do that, there is every prospect that the scheme will be a disaster.

Nia Griffith: It makes tremendous sense for the provision of information to be the responsibility of the seller. We all know of cases where houses remain on the market for ages while prospective buyer after prospective buyer pays for the same information, discovering features that make the property undesirable or unrealistically priced. The onus on the seller to provide a home information pack and an energy performance certificate will help to avoid much duplication.
	Many people are both vendors and purchasers, so although they will have to provide information about the home that they sell, they will benefit from the information about the houses that they view. The earlier in the process such information is available, the less likely people are to want, or to be forced, to pull out of the purchase, which can often result in a chain reaction of lost sales, expensive bridging loans and immense stress. First-time buyers will particularly benefit from the fact that the seller must provide useful and valuable information that could save them from going a long way down the line only to discover a major problem.
	For many of us in this place, who have experience of living in various homes and paying numerous bills, the features we need to look at to assess energy efficiency may be obvious. First-time buyers are the least likely to have such experience, yet they are often among the most committed to tackling climate change and have the most need to budget carefully for future fuel bills.
	We hear plenty of warm words about tackling climate change and reducing emissions, but it is no good talking about it if we are not prepared to introduce measures and incentives that actually encourage home owners to focus on energy efficiency. If people know that they will need to obtain an energy performance certificate when they sell their home it will encourage them to prioritise measures that make their home more energy efficient. They will benefit from lower energy bills, while the do-it-yourself market will respond by providing better information about the energy efficiency of materials and products.
	There has been a tendency for opponents of the scheme to say that the pack may not tell the whole story; and of course, caveat emptorlet the buyer beware. None the less, the pack is a valid tool. We could compare the process to buying a second-hand car with a recent MOT certificate. Although the MOT does not tell the whole story, and the purchaser obviously checks the car, nevertheless it provides extremely valuable information about the legality and roadworthiness of the vehicle, as well as information about its emissionsall provided by an expert with the equipment to test features that the average driver cannot examine.
	Just as no one now disputes the usefulness of MOTs, so the same will soon be true of home information packs and energy performance certificates.

It being one and a half hours after the commencement of proceedings on the motion, Mr. Deputy Speaker  put the Question, pursuant to Standing Order No. 16.
	 The House divided: Ayes 234, Noes 306.

Question accordingly negatived.

Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 83A(7),
	That the following provisions shall apply to the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Order of 10th October 2006 in the last Session of Parliament (Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill (Programme)):
	 Consideration of Lords Amendments
	1. Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement at this day's sitting, or at the moment of interruption, whichever is the later.
	2. The Lords Amendments shall be considered in the following order: 2, 3, 5, 6, 10, 1, 4, 7 to 9 and 11 to 35.
	 Subsequent stages
	3. Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
	4. The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement. [Mr. Roy.]
	 Question agreed to.

Orders of the Day

Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill

Lords amendments considered.

Clause 2
	  
	Meaning of relevant duty of care

Lords amendment: No. 2.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I beg to move, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 3, 5, 6 and 10 and the Government motions to disagree thereto, and Government amendment (a) in lieu of the Lords amendments.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I am proud to say that we are nearly there with the Bill and with getting a new offence of corporate manslaughter on to the statute book. I hope that for all those people who have campaigned for so long for this new offenceto whom I pay tribute todaywe can ensure that the final stages of the Bill are not further delayed. We have come a long way to get here and achieved a lot in the Bill. We have a new offence of corporate manslaughter and a new basis for liability. We have extended the new offence beyond corporate bodies to unincorporated partnerships, trade unions and employer associations. With publicity orders, we have created a new form of sanction. It will be the first offence in the UK to have that new sanction. We will discuss that later this afternoon.
	Also, we have taken a significant step in lifting Crown immunity. Lifting Crown immunity has ensured that the public and private sectors will be on an equal footing, in terms of corporate manslaughter, when carrying out the same activities. Workers and the workplace are comprehensively covered, as are the kinds of activities where traditionally there have been concerns about health and safety in the private sector: construction, maintenance, the supply of goods, and the use of plant and vehicles. However, lifting Crown immunity raises difficult issues in relation to other types of activity performed by the state that the private sector does not do, or does only on behalf of the state. The issues include where the line between a Government policy and its implementation is, and whether the effect of imposing liability for the offence would cut across some of the aims of the activities.
	I am talking about areas that are unique to Government or require specific statutory powers to be carried out and for which other forms of investigation and accountability exist. They are also areas where any deaths raise questions that go beyond the general remit of health and safety, which is what the Bill is primarily aimed at. Both Houses have supported us in the principle of exempting some such areas, including the police and the armed forces when engaged in operational activities, and the emergency services when responding to life-threatening situations.

Edward Garnier: Can the Minister tell the House why the argument that he is putting forward is not in conflict with his Government's policy of introducing the Human Rights Act 1998?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I will come on to the issues around the Human Rights Act. Clearly, we believe that by lifting Crown immunity in the way that we have, we have taken a considerable step forward in health and safety legislation. I will return to the point that the hon. and learned Gentleman raises a little later.

Edward Garnier: Can I press the Minister further on that?

Gerry Sutcliffe: You can try.

Edward Garnier: During the passage of the Human Rights Bill in this Housethe Minister may well have taken part in those debates; I certainly didit was pointed out to the Government that passing the Act would lead to foreseeable and obvious constitutional collision points between the courts and the Government. That is coming to pass. Surely the Government have thought about this matter. They have had eight years or so since the 1998 Act to think about it. Why are they pursuing the argument that they are now pursuing?

Gerry Sutcliffe: The hon. and learned Gentleman is trying to take me down an avenue that I do not wish to go down this afternoon. He will know that several discussions are taking place about relationships with the judiciary. I am sure that we will return to that issue in due course.

Andrew Dismore: I am sure that my hon. Friend is aware that my Committee, like other Select Committees, has produced several reports complimenting the Government on the principle of introducing the Bill, which we regard as a key human rights achievement.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who chairs the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I know that its deliberations have been welcomed, as has its support for several aspects of the Bill.
	Let me return to the key aspect of the debate: the way in which custody should fit into the scheme. We think that the picture is complex, so it would be useful at this point to consider what is meant by custody. It can cover a spectrum of activities, ranging from police arrest and short-term detention followed by release back on to the street, to the lifelong detention and management of serious offenders. Those very different activities cannot all be treated the same. Some of the activities that could fall into the scope of custody border on those that the House and the other place have agreed should not be covered by the Bill. For example, arrest and police detention are closely linked to policing operations.

Dominic Grieve: I am listening carefully to the Minister, but I find that aspect of his expos quite astonishing. Custody is a clearly defined concept: when a person is in the custodythat also implies the care and controlof another person. It is entirely distinct from police operations before a person is taken into custody. I might try to intervene a little later as the Minister continues his speech, but it seems that he is about to make a very bad point.

Gerry Sutcliffe: It is for the hon. Gentleman to decide whether I make a bad or a good point. I am trying to explain our view of the situation surrounding custody in the context of the Bill. I am sure that he will accept that the Government have moved a long way to try to resolve the issue. I will develop my theme further, and I am sure that if he thinks the bad points are getting worse he will intervene again. However, I think that there is a distinction to be made in relation to the police.
	There are questions about whether applying the offence to custody would have unintended and unwanted consequences in the form of risk aversion, which we discussed in Committee. We have always argued that risk aversion can be greater in the public sector, where there is not the drive of profit to balance against it. That is especially true in high-risk areas, of which custody is undoubtedly one. Would applying the offence mean, for example, that the police would be less likely to pick up a drunk lying in the streetperhaps for that person's own goodgiven that there would be no liability until the person were held in a cell?
	Finally, there is a point that has been made several times while discussing this subject: Government policy is fundamentally linked to the custodial environment. Separating policy from its implementation is very difficult when the two are so closely aligned, such as in the case of the provision of resources to prisons to make cells safer and the management of those resources locally. A question on whether sufficient money had been spent on a particular cell would go right back to the decision taken in government about the amount of resources that should have been allocated. Questions about the way in which resources were allocated and whether they were sufficient are not for the courts to consider. The recommendations from the Joint Committee on Human Rights included increasing funding throughout the prison estate. Although it is right for the Joint Committee to make such recommendationsthat is its roleit is certainly not the role of the courts to decide how taxpayers' money should be spent.

Edward Davey: When we are considering custody, do we not want the authorities to be risk averse? If someone is at risk of committing suicide in prison, surely we want to ensure that the governor and his or her staff ensure that that person does not commit suicide, so they are more risk averse. Surely the Minister does not want people in charge of custody to be more risky.

Gerry Sutcliffe: Certainly not. We actively try to avoid deaths in custody. I will speak a little later about how we intend to improve the situation. However, there could be an opportunity for risk aversion. The hon. Gentleman was not present at the time, but I remember hon. Members on both sides of the Committee giving examples in which there was a possibility of people becoming risk averse. I do not think that the story about the drunk in the street is something that could not possibly happen. People would think twice about their position.

Dominic Grieve: The Minister squarely raised a point about cost. My understanding, as it was in CommitteeI have read carefully what the Attorney-General said in another placeis that if someone dies in a cell fire in a prison because the fire precautions in the cell were insufficient, liability for prosecution against the Home Office could lie. That is a clear example of cost coming into the equation. If cost can come into that equation, why is there anxiety about cost in the case of someone being able to commit suicide in a prison cell because there was inadequate supervision due to cost factors? What is the distinction between the two cases?

Gerry Sutcliffe: We are concerned about public policy issues relating to the distribution of resources to particular services. The hon. Members for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) and for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) should allow me to continue my speech, because I hope to allay some of their fears by pointing out the way in which the Government are trying to respond to some of the concerns about deaths in custody that were raised in the other place and in Committee.
	We have listened to the serious concerns expressed both in the House and the other place. While we do not believe that it is right for custody to be covered by the offence, we have tried to respond in two other ways to the strength of concern about the way in which the Government are tackling deaths in custody.
	First, we want to strengthen the arrangements for the independent investigation of deaths in custody. Hon. Members will know of the Independent Police Complaints Commission and the inquest procedure, but we have also decided to put the prisons and probation ombudsman on a statutory footing. The ombudsman has investigated all deaths in prisons, young offender institutions and immigration detention centres since 2004. Since last year, he has investigated those in secure training centres. He and his office have a detailed knowledge of custodial practice and policies. It has been the Government's intention to put the appointment on a statutory footing since 2003. Again, that is a recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
	Legislation will place a formal duty on the ombudsman to examine all deaths under his remit. It will allow him to decide the scope and procedures to be adopted in investigations. It will also give him new High Court powers to obtain evidence and to allow him to work with other ombudsmen, when appropriate. The ombudsman's post is independent of the organisations that he investigates, but the Government recognise that putting the role on a statutory footing would remove any perception that he was not independent of the Government. Indeed, he would be appointed by Her Majesty.

Edward Davey: Will the Minister confirm that that statutory footing will not give the ombudsman the power to establish liability?

Gerry Sutcliffe: Again, we will want to examine the detail of the role and responsibilities when we consider the next appropriate legislative vehicle, in line with the Joint Committee's recommendations. I do not think that that will be the outcome, but I do not want to pre-empt the discussions that will have to take place about what the statutory powers will be.

Jeremy Wright: The Minister's preference is clearly a measure that will allow the Secretary of State to make regulations to include custody in the appropriate duties of care at a later date. Either now or later in his speech, will he explain to the House why including custody might be appropriate in the future, but would not be appropriate now?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I hope to do that. I am grateful for that intervention and the hon. Gentleman's involvement throughout the Bill's passage. I am trying to express the fact that we think that the role of the prisons and probation ombudsman will need time to develop in the way in which we have outlined. We will deliver the new role through the next appropriate legislative vehicle.
	Secondly, in response to the Lords amendments and the hope expressed in the Lords that applying the offence to deaths in custody would reduce such deaths, we have decided to review the role of the forum for preventing deaths in custody. That independently chaired forum, on which Baroness Stern sits as an observer from the Joint Committee on Human Rights, brings together practitioner and inspectorial professionals from across the relevant services involved in detention for which the Ministry of Justice, Home Office and Department of Health are responsible. The forum's remit is to compare and contrast approaches, and to identify and draw attention to good practice and issues that require further attention from the services or from Ministers.
	The forum is working well and is meeting many of the criteria that the Joint Committee set out in its recommendations for a taskforce. I believe that it has great potential to bring about real changes and improvements to safety in custody, but I acknowledge that there is room for improvement of the forum; we need to give it greater autonomy from Government, and increase its capacity for sharing information and conducting research. We will review the forum, but it is too early to say exactly how it may change. However, we will consider issues such as resourcing, capacity and the interaction between Ministers and the forum. In terms of time scale, we have already started to consider how we might strengthen the forum.
	I hope that the two measures that I have mentioned demonstrate our strong commitment to reducing deaths in custody and to ensuring that each death receives proper investigation. However, as the hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) pointed out, we are also proposing amendments in lieu of the Lords amendments. By doing that, we are acknowledging the strength of feeling expressed in Parliament about duties to people in custody, and concerns about the fact that those duties were not included in the Bill. We propose giving the Secretary of State power to amend the Bill by affirmative resolution to increase the categories of duty of care. Although the power that we are proposing does not bring custody into the Bill, it leaves the door open to doing so, without primary legislation, in future.

Chris Mullin: I welcome the Government's considerable movement on the issue. Will the Minister give us some idea of the timetable that he has in mind? When will that day dawn?

Gerry Sutcliffe: My response to my hon. Friend, and to the other hon. Members who have asked, Why are you waiting? is that it is important that people recognise how far the Government have moved on the issue, and I am sure that they will. Previously, we did not want to deal with deaths in custody in the Bill, for reasons that we outlined in the other place and in our discussions in Committee. It will take time to develop the role of the prisons and probation ombudsman, and to strengthen the forum for preventing deaths in custody. If those bodies work well, there may not be any need to put the offence in the Bill, but if they do not, the power that I mentioned is in place, and a measure can be introduced through the affirmative procedure. We hope that that is enough to satisfy hon. Members, and we hope that they acknowledge and accept that the Government have moved a tremendous distance.

Edward Garnier: If the Minister is right in his expectations, there probably will not be any prosecutions.

Gerry Sutcliffe: The hon. and learned Gentleman will have read the  Hansard report in which I said that I hope that the legislation is never used. We do not want prosecutions; we want the corporate bodies to make sure that their policies are strong enough to prevent any of the offences from taking place, so I wholeheartedly agree with him on that.

James Duddridge: rose

Gerry Sutcliffe: I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but then I need to make progress.

James Duddridge: I thank the Minister for giving way. Will he give an indication of when the review might take place? Does he anticipate that it will be after three years, or five years? It is important for him to state that now, and to state the nature of that review; otherwise, the date might simply be pushed further and further back by successive Ministers.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I hope that that is not the case. We are trying to meet the requirements placed on us in the discussions and debates in both Houses, and we are trying to accommodate the concerns that have been raised, recognising that the Government's first viewpoint was that provisions on deaths in custody should not be included in the Bill. I hope that, through the forum, we can make great progress fairly quickly. We will have to find the appropriate legislation to deal with the ombudsman, and the development of those processes will lead us to consider whether to use the affirmative procedure in future. As I said to the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier), I hope that we never have to use the legislation, because the aim behind the Bill is to ensure that corporate bodies in the public and private sectors have policies in place.

Dominic Grieve: It would be helpful to have some clarification. When the Minister wrote to explain what the Government were seeking to do, he said that they would need to take into account how the legislation works in practice. I understood that to mean the legislation that we are enacting, without the bit on deaths in custody, which we are going to take out. I must say that I was a bit surprised by what he said, because when we debated the issue in Committee, it was emphasised to us that we could not compare the other aspects of the legislation to the issue of deaths in custody, because that was a completely different matter. Now I detect that the Minister is saying that the Government are really waiting to see whether there is any need to include provisions on death in custody, because if there are not too many deaths in custody, they might get away with not putting provisions on death in custody on the statute book. That is a slightly different thing. Will the Minister clear up that aspect of the issue?

Gerry Sutcliffe: That certainly is not the case. The debate on the Bill has been conducted in a generous spirit and I hope hon. Members will appreciate that we have tried to meet the concerns that have been expressed. That is reflected in the number of amendments that the Government have accepted here and in another place. We are opening the door because we hear the concerns that have been raised with us. We want to make sure, through the committees and other bodies that we set up, that we focus on deaths in custody and that there is full examination of each and every one of those tragic deaths, but we want to do that properly. That depends on the enactment of the Bill and how the other two situations develop.

Fiona Mactaggart: I am glad that the Government are contemplating including custody in the offence; my anxiety is that they have form in that respect. For example, they promised that the prisons ombudsman would be put on a statutory footing. Will the Minister remind the House when that promise was first made and what has happened since then? He will understand that Members are anxious about when the proposed power might be used.

Gerry Sutcliffe: My hon. Friend said that the Government had form. She was a member of the Government at the time she referred to, in a similar role to my good self. The Joint Committee on Human Rights suggested in 2003 that statutory powers should be given to the PPO. Ministers come and go, and I can only repeat that I and the Government have listened to what has been said. Deaths in custody are tragic events and we need to ensure that we prevent them whenever we can, and that when something has gone wrong we determine what has happened.
	I understand why hon. Members are trying to push me into announcing a timetable, but they should reciprocate the generosity that I have shown in tabling the amendments. I see hon. Members shaking their heads, so I clearly will not convince the Opposition. However, I hope my hon. Friends recognise how much progress has been made.
	The power will allow flexibility to extend the offence to duties or to people in all forms of custody and detention. Whether and when the power is to be exercised will need to be considered in light of the other steps that we are taking. We will need to see how the new offence works in practice, the impact of putting the prisons and probation ombudsman on a statutory footing, and how the reformed forum for preventing deaths in custody works, and it will depend on whether the complexities that I set out earlier can be resolved. All these aspects need to be addressed.
	What we are proposing is a significant step in opening the way to extending the offence, if that is considered right in due course. For the present, for the reasons that I have outlined, we remain of the view that the offence should not apply to custody in the blanket way that it would were the Lords amendments accepted.
	When we last discussed the matter in the House, there was firm support for the Government's position. We have listened to the strong messages from those in favour of extending the provisions of the Bill to custody, and we have come a long way towards meeting those concerns. We have accepted the principle that the new offence may extend to custody at some time in the future.
	I have been pleased by the way that we have been able to work together in the House and the other place on this important legislation. As I said at the start, we have come a long way from our starting point and it is right that the Bill has received constructive scrutiny, first from the Joint Scrutiny Committee and then during its passage through Parliament. I hope that hon. Members and those in the other place will be willing to compromise on this final issue and accept the amendment in lieu.

Dominic Grieve: Throughout these proceedings, I have always been absolutely satisfied as to the sincerity of the Minister's explanations, and I am grateful to him for the further minor concession that has been extracted from the Government. I note that last week when I saw the Minister there was mention of putting only the ombudsman on a statutory footing. I rejected that out of hand, so along with other hon. Members I suppose that I can take some credit for the further movement by the Minister towards having a power that can be enacted by statutory instrument. However, when one looks at the overall picture, one sees that it remains woefully inadequate, and I want to explain why.
	We have conducted this debate with some good humour, which I do not wish to depart from, but the Minister was right when he said that this was a serious topic. We are talking about the deaths of people in custody. I think I am right in saying that between 1995 and 2005, nearly 2,000 people died in custody. Of course, the vast majority of those died by their own hand, and in many cases there was nothing that even the maximum amount of care or supervision would ever have done to prevent those tragedies from happening. But in that period, 10 verdicts of unlawful killing were recorded by inquestsjuriesin respect of people who died in custody, which seems to indicate that they felt that in those cases the rule of law had been seriously undermined, and anecdotally there is ample evidence that other cases of those 2,000 give rise to really serious disquiet, and a number have been highlighted.
	There was the case of Zahid Mubarek, who died in custody at Feltham having been placed in a cell with a person who was well known to the prison officers to be in a state of psychosis and to have psychopathic tendencies and racist instincts. A current case concerning a man called Joseph Scholes has still not been resolved and I will not comment further on it. Each one of those needed legal challenges by the families even to obtain an inquiry into what happened. In the case of Zahid Mubarek, the conclusions of the inquiry, in terms of attitudes, practices and management at the young offenders institution, were truly damning.
	It is in the light of that, and in the light of the fact that, as I said in an intervention on the Minister, a person who has been deprived of their liberty for whatever reason is under both the control of the person who deprives them of their liberty, but also, in a very special sense, the care of the person who deprives them of their liberty, the House has to consider whether it is right that deaths in custody should be included in the framework of corporate manslaughter.
	The Government, very properly, in raising Crown immunity have conceded that Crown organisationsGovernment Departmentsshould no longer have the previous blanket exemptions. That is a major concession that is fundamentally right. As I highlighted to the Minister in my intervention, in the case of prisoners who died in a fire in a prison because there had been insufficient investment in fire protection equipmenta clear issue of cost, management or policyor because the extinguishers had not been checked, the Home Office would be liable to prosecution under this legislation. That is another major concession, which is absolutely proper.
	Let us consider where one might feel that the issue of care is most obvious, namely in regard to the welfare of people in detention: making sure that they do not die by their own hand, wherever possible, or by the hand of another inmatea real possibility, but one which management systems are in place to try to ensure does not happen. In those two key areas, the Government have simply shown themselves unwilling to budge until the 11th hour and 59th minute. We now have a concession which, although welcomelike any concessiondoes not really take us very much further.

Edward Garnier: Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government's arguments stand at odds with our own experience? There have been a number of cases since 1998 where patients or patients' families, or those supporting patients, have sued the NHS, in whichever guise it happens to be, in relation to the giving of treatment, the withdrawal of treatment or the refusal to give treatment to a particular patient. Clearly, behind those cases lies the question of Government resourcespublic resourcesand their allocation by that particular part of the NHS. The court decides, on the basis of the evidence before it, whether this is an incursion into some part of public policy which the courts do not get involved in, or it decides, on the facts of the case before it, that it can make or withhold an order. Surely the principle is precisely the same in this case and the Minister is at odds with his own Government's policy.

Dominic Grieve: I entirely agree with my hon. and learned Friend. The irony of the situation is that health trusts will be covered by the legislation. Generally speaking, when one thinks of health trusts one thinks of the possibility of patients being killed through gross negligence in hospitals. However, in the context of mental hospitals, there is also the possibility that one patient might be killed by another, in circumstances that are so similar to those which are, I think, the nub of the Government's concernsI keep trying to understand the nature of their anxietyas to be identical. The Government are, very properly, willing to make the concession in that context but unwilling to budge in the context of custody within prison cells or police cells or any other form of lawful custody. I find a rather worrying irrationality in that.
	I shall wait with interest to hear from the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), whose Committeethe Joint Committee on Human Rightsreported on this matter. In reviewing why the Government were unwilling to make this provision, it stated, at paragraph 2.13 of its report:
	Having considered the Government's arguments, we therefore remain of the view expressed in our earlier report, that the exclusion from the scope of the new offence of deaths in custody and other deaths caused by gross management failure in the public sector where no individual can be proved to be responsible is likely to lead to the UK being found to be in breach of its positive obligation to protect life under Article 2 ECHR.
	The Government have not dealt with that. If that is the Committee's viewand it is advised by learned counsel in its deliberationsthat must give rise to the prospect that the longer we go on having an architecture that is only partial, not complete, the greater will be the risk of an article 2 challenge if there is a death in custody. That will leave the Government facing embarrassment. It will also leave the Bill found wanting, because it provides a special and particular protection to one state activity that is not based, as in some of the other exemptions such as defence, on the inherent risks that people have to run, but on the fact that, for whatever reason, the state feels that it would be too difficult to extend this protection to individuals in lawful custody. I must say that I find that rather abhorrent, because it is to such peoplethose who are being deprived of their liberty, often for good reasonthat we have a special responsibility.
	There has been the nastiest sensenot from the Minister, I might say, but certainly from the Home Secretary on Reportthat it was thought to be beneath Parliament's area of responsibility to pay such attention to such individuals. I was rather hoping that as the Minister's responsibilities have been transferred from one master to another, we might see a new ethos prevailing. However, I regret to say that the baleful influence of the Home Secretary continues to contaminate Government in a variety of ways, whether in sudden explosions against the European convention on human rightsin Venice of all places; I would have thought that that rather romantic environment might mollify his behaviouror in the extent to which he still seems to be exercising control over the Ministry of Justice even though he no longer controls criminal justice policy. In view of some of the answers to parliamentary questions about who is responsible for what that I have received in the past few days, I am bound to say that a certain lack of clarity remains as to where responsibilities lie.
	When the matter was considered in another place and the amendments were accepted by overwhelming votes by the standards of the House of Lordsthe majority was almost 100, with many peers who take the Government Whip supporting the inclusion of the protection so that corporate manslaughter would apply in relation to individuals in custodyLord Ramsbotham made a powerful, impassioned speech that was nevertheless of the utmost rationality. He made the point that the problem is not policy but good management. The Under-Secretary appears to be undertaking an exercise in courteous weaving to get himself off that spike.
	Nobody expects the impossible. People will continue to die in custody and it will be no one's fault, but the failings have not been of policy. It is possible that the Home Secretary has an attitude that he has kept secret from the House but I would not accuse him of that. I cannot envisage a Minister or policy maker enacting or ignoring policies that will tend to lead to someone dying in custody. I have a higher opinion of the Governmentof any Governmentthan that.
	We are therefore considering management. Lord Ramsbotham said that, and he is right. The Under-Secretary must deal with the question of why he appears ready to allow for covering up and protecting those who manage processes badly in the custodial environment. That reflects badly on us all.

Chris Mullin: May we take it from the tone of the hon. Gentleman's remarks that a Conservative Government who found that the matter had not been tackled would quickly attend to it?

Dominic Grieve: Yesundoubtedly. On Report, I made the point that I must face up to the fact that, were I a Minister of the Crown, we would be in government. I conceded that, were it my lot to be a Home Office Minister, having enacted the legislation I might feel that it was hanging over me like a sword of Damocles. However, I would have to put up with that. Ministers have to put up with all sorts of swords of Damocles hanging over them, including, in the case of the Under-Secretary, those hung by the Home Secretary. It is part of a Minister's lot. If Ministers have to resign because an especially serious scandal occurs, we must live with that, too.
	The architecture of the Bill does not provide for personal liability. The Under-Secretary and Iindeed, most members of the Committeeagreed with that. From that point of view, the measure is sensible, but it is therefore all the more nonsensical not to include deaths in custody, which are a matter of genuine public concern.
	Let us consider the Government's alternative. They appear to offer us a wing and a prayer. The optimistic way of viewing it is that, the moment the Home Secretary is removed from the Cabinet, the incubus that prevents the provision that we are considering from being accepted will be lifted. We might therefore expect the statutory instrument that we all want sometime in the autumn.
	However, the Under-Secretary, with his customary courtesy, chose his words carefully. Listening to them, it appeared that we are considering a long-term hope. I was troubled because I got the impression from the Under-Secretary's letter that we were examining the way in which the measure would work in practice. However, his comments today seemed to go beyond that. He almost appeared to be saying, See how well we can do without the legislation, or the bit of it that we are discussing. That is inadequate.
	Perhaps I did not give Labour Back Benchers sufficient credit earlier. The Government have been required to change their mind at least partly due to Labour Back Benchers expressing their great concern about the matter. That, coupled with events in the other place, is the reality because the Government have a substantial majority. Those Back Benchers who may be wooed by this proposal should think how it will look in the future. I hope that in five years' time, we will have a Conservative Government who will do what is needed, but if Labour Members' expectations are fulfilled and there is another Labour Government for a long time to come, I have a nasty feeling that we could be waiting a very long time indeed before the statutory instrument is enacted.

James Duddridge: When the statutory instrument is brought forward under a Conservative Government, will the definition of custody be similar to that proposed for clause 2? That is to say, will it include, as well as prisons,
	secure mental health facilities, secure children's homes, secure training centres, immigration removal centres
	and so forth?

Dominic Grieve: It is absolutely vital that it should. My hon. Friend is quite right to raise that issue. I have to say that one of my anxieties about the Government's offering is that because the statutory instrument will be a complete redrafting of this part of the Billthe Government want to delete the Lords amendments as they have come back from the other placethose additional provisions might easily not be in it. Furthermore, because a statutory instrument is not amendable, the House would be presented with a take-all or leave-all proposal. I simply say to any hon. Members who may be tempted by this compromise that it offers very little in reality. The most that can be said for it is that it offers the opportunity of a shortcut rather than full primary legislationbut with all the drawbacks of such shortcuts, which do not always deliver what individuals might reasonably expect.
	The other place was very careful in the drafting of its amendments, which are comprehensive. Of course secure children's accommodation and secure mental health places must be included. Anyone in custody should be covered by the legislation, which is what I believe Parliament really wants to see. I am only sorry that we seem to be unable to persuade the Government to do the right thing.
	I do not intend to take up any more of the House's time. This is a discrete issue but an important one. Conservative Members cannot accept the Government's offering. We may not vote against every particular part, but we will vote against the Government's motion relating to clause 2. That will highlight the fact that we wish to keep the Bill in the form it assumes as it comes back from the other place. I strongly urge hon. Members to look to their consciences on this matter, because the House has an opportunity to do some good. The Minister knows that although I have been properly enthusiastic about some aspects of the Bill, I have pointed out its shortcomings. It is probably not everything that everybody hoped it would be. In this particular area, however, we really have an opportunity to make a difference. We should make that difference and I urge the House to persuade the Government to make it by voting to retain the Bill as it has come back to us from the other place.

Andrew Dismore: I say to the Minister that I acknowledge that the Government have moved quite a long waycertainly in comparison with the Bill on Report, when we heard a rather acrimonious intervention from the Home Secretaryand I thank him for the courteous way in which he has engaged with me and other Government Members on many occasions in order to move this particular issue forward. I believe that he has searched constructively to find a compromise that we can all live with and it is important to note that the Government's alternative concedes the basic principle directly in the Bill, which is a major step that we all welcome.
	I have been campaigning for a corporate manslaughter Bill for all but 20 years, ever since I was professionally involved in the King's Cross fire, representing victims and their families. When I started that campaign, I did not think that I would still be arguing about this particular issue now, but it is a very significant matter and probably the only outstanding point that we need to argue about in relation to the Bill.
	I share the concern of others about some of the shortcomings in the Bill as a whole, but we are making some progress here. The key is to think about the Bill's purpose. As the Minister explained, we hope that it will never need to be used, because if it is used, it reveals a failure, highlighting an avoidable death that has come about as a result of gross negligence. The Bill is all about encouraging people to take steps to ensure that such deaths do not occur when they could be prevented.
	The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) challenged me over the matter of article 2. He made a strong point, but the real question is whether the Government's package as presented today goes some way towards meeting their obligation under article 2, which is not to bring a prosecution but to protect the right to life of citizens, including those in custody. If there has been a serious breach, there should be a prosecution of those involved or, in the case of an organisation, of the organisation concerned. The hon. Gentleman made the fair point that the Government might still be vulnerable to an article 2 case in the European Court or under the Human Rights Act 1998 in the domestic courts. I think, however, that what is going on here will make the Government a little less vulnerable. The key question relates to when the measure would be brought into effect, and I will come back to that point later.
	The fact remains that, since the Joint Committee on Human Rights expressed its views in its second report on the Bill, things have moved on through the package that the Government are introducing today. We are trying to protect vulnerable people, by one means or another, from dying in custody. The first part of the three-element package is the decision to put the prisons and probation ombudsman on a statutory footing, which is welcome. The ombudsman provides an independent focus for investigations into deaths and a proper level of scrutiny, as well as facilitating the involvement of the victim's family. They can also create a degree of public confidence that an inquiry carried out within the system could not.
	It is clear that the ombudsman should be placed on a statutory footing; this has been the Government's position for some time, as my hon. Friend the Minister mentioned earlier. The provision was supposed to be in the 2005 Bill, which fell because of the general election. On 9 February, Baroness Scotland wrote to me in my capacity as Chair of the Joint Committee, saying that the Government wanted to introduce the measure at the most appropriate opportunity. The ombudsman has been investigating deaths in custody since April 2004 and has gained some expertise in the field. However, if we are to satisfy the other place, we need to establish some time frames for the proposals. When does my hon. Friend the Minister envisage that appropriate opportunity arising? If it does not involve a Bill in the present Session, I hope that one can be introduced in the next Session, after the Queen's Speech. We need to make rapid progress on this matter.
	My hon. Friend mentioned the forum on deaths in custody, which was the subject of one of the key recommendations of the Joint Committee's third report of the 2004-05 Session. We published a progress report on the subject in our seventh report of the 2006-07 Session. I pay tribute to Baroness Stern, a member of my Committee and of the forum, not only for her work on the forum but for her stalwart campaigning on deaths in custody over many years.
	The forum comprises 15 different organisations and it is welcome that the people involved have been brought together. I also welcome the Government's proposal that the forum should be strengthened. The real question involves the ways in which that might happen. The Committee received a note from the chair of the forum, John Wadham, with the Government's response to the progress report that we published in March this year. He raised a number of issues, and I would like to hear my hon. Friend the Minister's response to them.
	The first relates to the coroners rules. My hon. Friend has not said anything about those rules, but now that he is in the Ministry of Justice that matter comes under his new responsibilities. I hope that he will be able to tell the House whether the powers that need to be changed will be changed to require responses from organisations to coroners' recommendations. That is long overdue, and if we cannot have a new draft coroners Bill for some timewhich is clearly the casethe rules will need to be amended, as recommended by the chair of the forum.
	Further issues identified by the forum include the prisoner escort record, a key handover mechanism that needs to be strengthened, and access to the police national computer by the Prison Service as part of its risk assessment activities in identifying prisoners at risk and taking steps accordingly. Those are all aspects of good practice that need to be dealt with. Perhaps my hon. Friend will confirm that those issues will be looked at.
	On a broader front, the chair of the forum, Mr. Wadham, makes the point clearly that the Government must ensure that the forum
	has the power and resources to act
	not just talk
	when it feels it necessary.
	In particular, the forum should be able
	to influence member organisations to improve practice (and to respond to bad practice).
	Mr. Wadham makes the particular point that this ability could be
	enhanced if the Forum were, in the future, to be chaired by someone entirely independent.
	I presume that he does not consider himself to be formally in that position. We are looking for those elements to be part of the reform of the forum, and perhaps my hon. Friend the Minister will confirm that he has those sorts of things in mind. More resources, more capacity and more interaction with Ministers are all welcome, as has been mentioned, but the forum has come up with those specific points so far.
	On the amendments, it is important that the Government have considered the principle, but I am concerned about the width of the discretion and the time frame. I would have preferred shall to may, as that would have imposed a stronger obligation on the Minister to keep the position under review and to act on such reviews. Inevitably, there are concerns about the width of the discretion in specifying the forms of custody, the description of the premises, the circumstances to which it applies and exceptions to the rules. I hope that my hon. Friend will flesh out the Government's thinking on that.
	The key issue must be the timetable. Is it the intention that the provision should come into effect once the additional prison places start to come on-stream in larger numbers? One of the concerns is about prison overcrowding. Is it the intention to enact the measure within a timetable that shows the effect of the other reforms proposed in relation to the forum, the ombudsman and the coroner? If my hon. Friend is to satisfy the House, and convince their lordships that they should accept his proposals in lieu of their own, he will need to go a little further.

Edward Davey: Can the hon. Gentleman think of a good reason to wait for the measure to be put into legislation?

Andrew Dismore: Some practicalities are involved. Everyone in the House would concede that the Prison Service is in a state of fluxto put it neutrallygiven some of the problems that it is experiencing. Some might say that that makes it even more important that the law comes into effect more promptly. However, if our intention is not to witch-hunt but to put right the Prison Service and stop such deaths, which is the purpose of the Bill, it is important that the ombudsman has a statutory footing and is able to investigate and make recommendations, that there are proper responses to coroners' recommendations on deaths in custody, and that the forum has the teeth that it needs to make real progress. I hope that that will happen quickly.
	If the measures are not brought into effect, the Government remain vulnerable to an article 2 challenge. I am prepared to give the Government a little leeway and the benefit of the doubt, but, if there were a challenge, I could not say whether the courts would do the same. My hon. Friend needs to act quickly on his proposed measures if he is to satisfy not just this House but the other place.

Jeremy Wright: Is it not wholly illogical to argue, as the hon. Gentleman appears to be doing, that if further protections for those in custody are coming along latersuch as those that he has set outit is sensible to wait until then before we give those in custody the protection that they would otherwise have if we implemented the amendments that the other place has sent back?

Andrew Dismore: No, it is not illogical. As I have readily conceded, the article 2 problem remains for the Government. In relation to trying to deal with such issues promptly, that is the outstanding lever on the Government. There is no point in starting prosecutions immediately, as that would take time and would not in itself lever in change. The purpose of the Bill is to act as a preventive measure, not to start bringing prosecutions. If our purpose is to try to prevent deaths in custody, the Government have come up with a clear package intended to achieve that objective. In the last recorded year, for example, we saw a reduction in suicides of about 14 per cent.60-odd people still died, which is far too many, and there were other deaths too. We need to give the Government the opportunity to bring the measures into effect rapidly and then, we hope, we will start to see a significant reduction.
	As was conceded on Report and today, the number of cases to which the Bill would apply is relatively small. On average, I think, a prisoner currently dies in violent circumstances virtually every other day, although that number is coming down. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield said that over the past few years there had been about 10 instances in which there might have been a prima facie case, and I think that number is probably about right. However, we are trying to deal with the problems involved in not just those 10 prima facie cases but the 200 or so other cases that would not be caught by the Bill. If what the Government are presenting today is a package of measures that would deal not only with the gross negligence cases but, more important, with all deaths in custody, I think we are seeing some real progress.

Gerry Sutcliffe: My hon. Friend has put his finger on the Government's reason for not wanting the Bill to be used in the way that has been suggested. The existing measures relating to deaths in custody are important to us, as are the existing measures to develop and strengthen the forum for preventing deaths in custody and powers for the prisons and probation ombudsman. We take this issue very seriously, but, as my hon. Friend said at the outset, the Bill did not seem to us to be an appropriate framework for such a measure. In my present role I am concerned about all deaths in custody, and I want to ensure that we do the maximum to prevent them.

Andrew Dismore: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I know that others wish to speak, and I have taken a number of interventions, so I shall end by saying that the Bill is intended as a preventive measure. As I have said, the article 2 problem will remain in the back pocket if the Bill and my hon. Friend's proposals do not fly, but I think he has done enough to satisfy me and most members of my Committee, although obviously I cannot speak for them; they will have to speak for themselves. If my hon. Friend is to satisfy the other place, however, he will have to come up with as detailed a time frame as possible when he responds to the debate.

Edward Davey: I think it is fair to say that the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) and his Committee have been exceedingly influential in putting pressure on the Government. The hon. Gentleman deserves praise from those in all parts of the House for the work that he and his colleagues have done. There was some dispute with Government lawyers over certain details of the Committee's analysis of how the European convention applies to the Bill, but I believe that the Committee came out on top. The hon. Gentleman also deserves credit for the way in which he has dealt with all the other principles that are at stake.
	Although I understand why the hon. Gentleman wants to give the Government the benefit of the doubt today, I think that he is wrong to let them off the hook at this juncture. It is welcome that they have conceded the principle, but there does not seem to be any justification for not going ahead now. Surely that would be entirely in line with all the other policies articulated by both the Minister and the hon. Gentleman.
	No one here opposes the idea of putting the prisons and probation ombudsman on a statutory footing. That has long been promised and has not yet been delivered, but it will be good when it is delivered. The forum for preventing deaths in custody appears to be doing a good job, although I note from a visit to its website earlier today that the most recent reports of its deliberations date back to June last year. The website needs to be updated slightly, so that we can see the good work that the forum has been doing. However, the hon. Gentleman's Committee has reported on it, and a report from John Wadham shows some of the excellent work that is being done on detailed issues such as the prisoner escort record. The record is a key practical measure, which states when a prisoner is being moved from one agency to another so that if that prisoner has any vulnerabilities, the information is properly shared.
	The Government deserve credit for such detailed work, but I do not see why that should prevent us from making progress on this particular issue. The Government seem to have put themselves in a better position to ensure that the Bill goes with the flow of the proposal, and I do not see any contradiction between the two.

Stewart Hosie: I concede that the practical measures are welcome and that custody is no longer an issue: it could and may be included at some point. However, is not the hub of the matter the question of principle over utility? For those in positions of power or responsibility there may not be equality under the law, while for those with a duty of care there may not be equal protection under the law unless custody is included at this point.

Edward Davey: I am grateful for that intervention because I totally agree. The hon. Gentleman was, I think, echoing a speech by Lord Ramsbotham which he began by stating those two key principles. The hon. Member for Hendon, who chairs the Joint Committee on Human Rights, often focuses on principles, and the House has a duty to do so, too.
	Lord Ramsbotham talked about equality before the law. Why should public bodies be less accountable before the courts than private bodies? I can see no good reason for that. If I were a serving prison governor or chief constable, I would consider that to be a slight insult. I would not want special protection or special privileges. I would want to assert that I could run my service and do my job to the same standards as anyone else. I would want to meet the highest standards. There should be no fear for them in this proposed legislation. They do not want to be above the law as it applies to other bodies. Equality before the law is a clear legal principle which should be applied.

Gerry Sutcliffe: Has the hon. Gentleman seen the letters from the British Transport police and several chief constables who have concerns about this issue from the perspective of risk aversion? This case is not being made by the Government; it is substantiated by people working on the front line.

Edward Davey: Former chief constables in the other place argued contrary to that. I am sure that the Minister will concede that if we were to gather around one table all the chief constables who are members of the Association of Chief Police Officers different views would be expressed.
	There is another key legal principle: equal protection under the law. Why should prisoners have less right to life than other people? Why should prisoners on remand, who have not been found guilty of any crime, have less right to life? Is it less serious if a prisoner rather than someone who is not a prisoner is killed as a result of grossly negligent management? I cannot see how anyone could possibly make that case in principle. If the Government persist in maintaining their position, and if Labour Back Benchers give in too easily, they will be in clear breach of these long-standing principles.
	I believeas the hon. Member for Hendon also appears tothat there is a danger that the Government would also risk being in contravention of article 2. I will not rehearse the legal arguments in the report, but they appear to focus on the interpretation of one particular casethe Oneryildiz caseand whether that applies to corporate bodies or only to individuals. The hon. Gentleman's Joint Committee makes a clear argument that it does apply to public bodies and that that case cannot be interpreted in the narrow way that the Government's legal advisers seem to want. Therefore, the Government again have a principled reason for moving.
	It has been interesting to follow over time how the Government have defended their positionthe counter-arguments that they have made. Those arguments have changedand, frankly, some of them have been poor. It has been argued that custody involves a unique set of factors. One of the Government responses states that the Prison Service does not control the amount or type of people coming inthat that is beyond its controland that they are often very difficult people with serious mental health problems or a serious tendency to violence. That is obvious; we already knew that. However, that does not mean that the people managing that service should not meet the highest possible standards.
	Some private sector organisations deal with very risky things where they do not know what is going to happen. Uncertainty exists in the private sector; it is not unique to the Prison Service. Risk management is an issue for all private bodies, just as it should be for the Prison Service. If the Prison Service correctly manages the risks involved in who might come through the door the next day and what their characteristics might be, it will never be found to be grossly negligent. We are asking not that there should be some special privilege, but that the Prison Service should go about its job in the same professional manner that this Government rightly expect of all private enterprises.
	The argument was also advanced that this issue is about public policy, the allocation of resources and the resource constraints affecting Government. Lord Ramsbotham nailed that one when he said that it is about not just cash but the ethos of the service, the value that people put on the lives of those in their care, and the management and various other structures. The forum that we have heard so much about is already dealing with some of these issues. I find it quite alarming that the prisoner escort record problem to which I referred earlier, whereby the information relevant to a vulnerable person transferring from one service to another is not automatically transferred, was not solved years ago. The fact that a forum had to be set up to highlight the problem suggests that there has been some pretty poor management. This is not a cash issue; it is a question of doing the job properly and not being incompetent.
	When the Government argue that the issue is one of resource constraints and public policy, what are they actually saying? They are saying, We want the right to be incompetent. We want the right to say to Parliament, 'We don't want the money necessary to do the minimum that human rights demand.' That is shocking. When has a Minister said to this House, We really need more money to do the job properly and to ensure that grossly negligent management does not occur, but we're not going to ask for it because there are other issues to consider? Effectively, that is what lies behind the Government's defence and it is just not good enough.
	Of course there are problems in the Prison Servicethe hon. Member for Hendon talked about themsuch as overcrowding and the huge rise in incidents of prisoner violence as a result of that overcrowding, but that is not the time to take off the pressure and say, Okay, it doesn't matter, then. It should matter even more, and such problems should be an impetus for reform.
	The Government have also argued in recent months that existing alternative accountability mechanisms for the Prison Service, the police and the health service should be turned to. They have been debated in this House and they do not stand up to analysis. Public inquiries are very rare and the Government work as hard they can to refuse them, so that is hardly a port of call for them to pray in aid. They have also referred to the role of Parliament, but elections are never fought over whether the Prison Service has behaved in a grossly negligent manner, so that is wishful thinking. In this House, accountability works on a totally different level. It does not work at the institutional levelat the level of a particular prison or police servicerelevant to the cases before us.
	The various investigations that the ombudsman, the Independent Police Complaints Commission and others undertake are of course a very important aspect of accountability; we welcome them and look forward to their being improved. However, and as I said in an intervention on the Minister, they simply try to work out what went wrong and what lessons should be learned; they do not say who was responsible. The difference is that they do not point the finger and say that a particular person should be called to account for those failings. Only if someone knows that they will be called to account is there a deterrent. It is clear from the reports of the Joint Committee and from the way in which the European Court has dealt with such cases that the threat of being brought before the criminal justice system acts as the most powerful deterrent. If we do not do that, we will not put in place the incentive structures required.
	The Government could benefit from bringing deaths in police custody within the scope of the Bill. The Government have been doing some great work and I pay tribute to the Minister and his colleagues; there has been some real improvement. Such an approach would go with the flow of, and not against, what the Government are trying to do. The compromise that has been set out is not really a compromise but an attempt to buy people off. The time scale that the hon. Member for Hendon talked about is critical. Let us remember that it took 10 years for this Bill to come before the House. It was promised in the general election in 1997, but we saw consultation after consultation. If we do not use this opportunity to require the Government to include deaths in custody on the face of the Bill, we could have to wait another 10 years for such deaths to be challengeable by a charge of corporate manslaughter.
	I urge the Minister to give way on this point. From how the Minister has behaved throughout the passage of the legislationwhich is impeccablyI think that he would like to give way on this. In his heart of hearts, he knows that the arguments are on our side and I urge him to follow his personal convictions.

John Denham: I speak on behalf of those who are prepared to accept the Government's proposalsor to be bought off, as the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey) suggests. I shall explain why. I am pleased that we are having this debate. My direct involvement in this Bill began when I chaired the Joint Scrutiny Committeewith the Home Affairs Committee and the Work and Pensions Committeeon it. Perhaps I should not say so as the Chairman of that Committee, but its work showed the value of draft scrutiny, because many other issues were sorted out before the Bill was introduced. I wish that we did that more often.
	The issue before the House is one of the few outstanding issues on which the Committee took a different view from the Government on what should be in the Bill. I argued the same case on Report and I have seen amendments passed in the other place, and I welcome the efforts that the Minister has made to get us to where we are tonight. I knowand from comments that have been made, the House knowshow much work it has required from him to get us to this position.
	For some people, who have followed the Bill from the perspective of losing friends or relatives in accidents such as the Marchioness disaster or train crashes, this subject appears to be a late entry into the Bill, which has given rise to concerns that the Bill itself may be threatened by our desire to extend it to cover custody. The Minister has done his best to get us to a position where the principle of covering deaths in custody is covered by the Bill without putting it under threat. He deserves the thanks of the House for that.
	Why am I prepared to accept this when, from the amendments that I tabled last time, it is evident that my preference would be a straightforward amendment to the Bill? The answer is that I believe that the amendment the Minister has tabled today will trigger a process that will lead inexorably to deaths in custody being brought within the scope of the Bill. Whether or not he feels he has the freedom tonight to talk about time scales, the fact is that the process, once started, will be unstoppable. The Minister is also responsible for prisons, and I do not believe that when he next meets the director of the Prison Service, he will say to him, I've got you out of that problem for the next few years, so I wouldn't worry about it if I were you. Instead, the Minister will say that deaths in custody could be included at any time and the Prison Service will have to be ready for that. Many of us would accept that, even if the provision had been on the face of the Bill, some delay in commencement would have been necessary to get the Prison Service to face up to its responsibilities in a way that it has not done so far. That is how the conversation will go.
	I do not wish to prejudge inquests in the pipeline, but there are some whose verdicts could make it untenable for the Government not to bring forward the resolution necessary under the amendment, however much the Government may prefer to consider the statutory ombudsman first and the forum next. I fear that there will be other inquests beyond those. That is the historical record, and the result will be that it will not be tenable for this or any Government not to enact this change.
	I believe that those of us who, a year or so ago, set out to bring this matter within the scope of the Bill are going to achieve our objective tonight. It is for that reason that I recommend to the House that we support the Government's proposal, which takes us a long way forward. As ever when Governments are asked to take a very different position from the one that they started with, there is a certain choreography about how such matters must be handled, but the amendment in lieu in the end gets us to where we want to go and delivers the result that we want. I am therefore very grateful to the Minister for everything that he has done.

Edward Garnier: I fully appreciate what the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) has said about his motives for supporting the Government in resisting the Lords amendment. I also accept that politics is largely a game of compromise, and that the best is very often the enemy of the good.
	In addition, I understand that the Minister must have felt as though he was in custody ever since the present Home Secretarywho has had various political personalities since 1997took office. Even if, metaphorically speaking, the Minister has been in the category D estate, rather than the secure estate, his freedom to think and speak as he would like on matters such as this has been closely circumscribed. The Home Secretary is due to leave office in a few weeks. When the Minister joins the 7,500 others who have absconded from the category D estate over the past 10 years, I hope that he will feel able to advance the case and the promise that he has laid before the House.
	It may be thought significant that the Howard League for Penal Reform has announced that Cherie Booth, the Prime Minister's wife, is to be the president of a commission that it has set up to look into the state and purpose of our prisons. I hope that the Minister might therefore take a rather more advanced view of the need for openness and candour about deaths in custody.
	I want to make a secondary point, although it is one that needs to be made from time to time. The guts of the Government's amendment in lieu reveal that it gives Ministers power to amend primary legislation by secondary legislation. I find such a power increasingly troublesome, and this Bill is not the first to allow it. Indeed, the amendment in lieu will mean that a Minister will be able to amend not just any old bit of primary legislation, but the criminal law.
	I appreciate that the Bill pins responsibility for corporate manslaughter on a corporate body, or at least on a non-human defendant. However, the consequences of the Minister making an amendment that would include a category of institution in the ambit of the Billor remove a category of institution from that ambitare too big to be covered by a system allowing amendment by statutory instrument.
	We have heard and read about the excuses that Ministers in this House and the other place have produced for not doing what I believe that the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), the Chairman of the Joint Committee, would really like them to be doing now. Those excuses can be loosely encompassed by the expression the doctrine of ripe time.
	Every Government have civil servants who, by way of a draft excuse, say, No, Minister, the time is not yet ripe. Well, here we are again: I have heard the Minister produce the time is not yet ripe excuse today, and one reads in the record of the debates in the other place that Lord Bassam has said things like, It's a jolly nice idea but we are not ready yet. In addition, the formal response from Baroness Scotland to the Joint Committee report uses about 50 paragraphs to say, broadly, that the time was not yet ripe.
	The argument could go on and on, and I suspect that, contrary to the hopes of the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen and the Minister, the ripeness of time doctrine will be deployed for some while. If the Conservative party is elected to government after the next election, I should not be surprised to find that we, not Labour, introduce the proposal.
	One of the most important reasons for asking the Government to change their mind and to agree with the House of Lords is that, by and large, prisons are secret places. Over the past 14 months, I have visited about 24 prisons in my Front-Bench capacityfrom those accommodating young offenders to the most secure establishments for adults, both men and women. They are largely secret places. The public do not know much about prisons or about what goes inside them, except when there is a disaster, an escape or the report of a death. I sincerely wish that the public knew more about what went on in prisons.
	As a direct consequence of the number of prison visits I have made over the past year or so, I can tell the House that, contrary to the general impression that might be gained from the arguments in favour of inclusion of the Lords amendment, the Prison Service and the private prison providers contain some hugely dedicated, well-meaning and professional people at all levels, from the governors and directors right down to the prison officers at floor level. I do not want anything I say in support of the arguments of my hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) or of the majority in the other place to be taken in any way as designed to denigrate or diminish the contribution of those who work in prisons.
	That prisons are difficult places to work in is uncontroversial. The report of Her Majesty's inspector of prisons on Her Majesty's prison Norwich shows that prisons are not only difficult but squalid places to work in. Last year, the Prison Service had to decant a wing of Norwich prison because the prisoners were living in their own sewage, so it follows that the prison officers had to work in that sewage. Unfortunately, owing to the dreadful condition of the prison estate and its overcrowded naturemore than 80,000 prisoners are in custody in England and Walesthat squalid wing of Norwich prison has had to be refilled. As a Crown Court recorder, I put up my hand as someone whose public duty it is occasionally to send people to prison, but when the characters and personalities of people who are, for good reasons and bad, in prisonpeople with personality disorders, people suffering from substance abuse, both drink and drugs, or people who are intellectually impairedare added to the overcrowded conditions in modern British prisons, it is hardly surprising that deaths occur.
	The reason why I wanted to intervene on the hon. Member for Hendon was not to criticise his arguments but to point out that in response to a recent written question to the Minister, I was told that 97 prisoners had suffered a self-inflicted death between January 2006 and April 2007. If one does the maths, that works out at more than six prisoners a month, on average. Those are self-inflicted deaths. There will be others. Right hon. and hon. Members will have their own examples, either from their constituency or because they have a general interest in and knowledge of the subject. There will also be deaths resulting from natural causes. With the increasing number of lifers, of prisoners serving indeterminate sentences, and of people of older years remaining in prison, I suspect that natural causes will account for a growing percentage of the deaths in prison. There will also be assaults by prisoners on other prisoners and, sadly, there will be cases where prison officersfor good reasons and badwill need to restrain prisoners who have lost their temper or who have no ability to control themselves, and who are then accidentally brought to an early death.

Andrew Dismore: I just want to put the record straight as the Joint Committee on Human Rights understands it from the information that we were given by the Government and that is recorded in our seventh report of 2006-07 in paragraph 2.2.1.1. That paragraph states:
	there were 67 apparent self-inflicted deaths among prisoners in England and Wales in 2006the lowest figure since 1996. This represents a fall of 14 per cent., compared with 78 such deaths in 2005. The three year average figure is on course to show a further reduction in the three years to April 2007.
	Those are the figures that the Committee was given. They are encouraging, but of course they probably represent only about a third of the overall total of deaths.

Edward Garnier: I do not want to have an argument with the hon. Gentleman about the numbers. We are seeing self-inflicted deaths at the rate of more than six a month now. If one looks at the figures over the last 10 years, there was a dip in the early 2000s, but, according to the latest figures, which I got from the Minister the other day, it appears that the numbers are going up again. I suspect that that is largely due to the hideous nature of the overcrowded prison estate and the nature of the people who are in prison. Prisons are difficult places in which to work, which is why I wanted to make it quite clear that I am not attempting to be derogatory about those who work in them.
	I think that the Lords amendment in question was originally tabled by Lord Ramsbotham. Let us look at his definition of custody. All the people who would be in Government or public care in those sorts of places are, by virtue of being in those places, powerless. They have the power to hit, to shout and to make a nuisance of themselves, but equality of arms does not exist. Therefore, Parliament, by passing legislation, must do what it humanly can and humanely should do to ensure that, in the sadly many unfortunate cases where deaths occur, the family of the dead person, and also we on behalf of the public as a whole, have a greater understanding of why that terrible eventthe deathoccurred.
	Let us take the example of the Mubarek case. A young man was murdered by a deeply disturbed and disturbing cell mate in Feltham young offenders institution. I visited that institution not so long ago and I can assure the House that the lessons from the Mubarek incident have been well and truly learned and taken on board, so that there is now an entirely different, albeit imperfect, regime for young people in that place. When that youngster died, it took the family years and years of pushing to get what they should have had by right: a candid and open explanation of why their loved one died. Why did it take legal action, which went all the way to the Judicial Committee of the House of Lords, before the family were granted what I suggest the Lords amendment that we seek to defend and that the Government wish to do down would provide?

Andrew Dismore: I think that the hon. and learned Gentleman is mixing up two different things. The measure would not have provided that. While it would have provided a criminal remedy to punish those involved, it would probably not have given answers to what happened. The Government's proposal, with, for example, new statutory powers for the ombudsmanI do not think that the ombudsman was in force at the timewould start to deal with the questions of what happened to Mubarek, which, I think, is what the family is especially concerned about. The Bill will create a deterrent effect and allow a prosecution to take place if things go wrong, but it will not necessarily address the specific point that the hon. and learned Gentleman raises.

Edward Garnier: I suspect that it probably will. While I take on board the hon. Gentleman's assertion that my argument is marginally off-beam, given that the Bill provides for a post-event criminal procedure, I suggest that the Bill could none the less provide a deterrent through an anticipatory effect.
	The Minister arguedit was not the best point that he made, but he was repeating Government Members in another placethat the courts should not interfere with public policy making and resource allocation. When I intervened on my hon. Friend the shadow Attorney-General, I hope that we dealt with that. I hope that the hon. Member for Hendon will agree that it was obvious that the passing of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the domestication of the convention into UK law would lead to issues of public policy being the fiercely fought subject of argument in the courts. The courts do their best to respect the separation of powers and to understand the difference between what they do and what we do. However, the law, be it the common law or statute lawwe are talking about statute law herecan drive policy, even if that should not be made in the courts.
	The Government lack confidence in their arguments about the way in which to proceed. If they are saying that amending legislation in the future by way of their proposed amendment in lieu will address this question adequately, they are selling themselves short and not doing themselves justice. If they really believe, as I suspect that they do, that they want to prevent deaths in custody and that any death in custody should be properly examined, with reasons given publicly, they ought to do what Lord Ramsbotham's amendments propose. They should follow the logic of their arguments, but at the moment I am concerned.
	Let me finish with several points that emerge from a report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which is chaired by the hon. Member for Hendon. As several hon. Members have pointed out, the Joint Committee made three criticisms of the Government's position, which I shall take in reverse order. Paragraph 2.12 of the Joint Committee's report in which the Bill was considered said that
	the Government seeks to justify the exclusions on the ground that criminal investigations are costly and disruptive and it would not be in the public interest to impose a resources burden on the Crown. In our view this concern with cost and resources belittles the importance of what is at stake: the right to life.
	If the Government were making a good argument about cost, we would never have any lengthy criminal investigations. The terrorist trials that recently concluded would never have got anywhere on the basis of cost, while the King's Cross disaster would never have been investigated. Those investigative procedures were hugely expensive. When the right to lifethe article 2 right under the convention, which the Government claim to have brought home to this countryis at stake, while one should bear cost in mind, it should not be a trump card.
	The Government's second argument was that
	public bodies are subject to wider forms of accountability, including accountability to Parliament, accountability under the Human Rights Act 1998, accountability through public inquiries and the existence of specific watchdogs such as the Independent Police Complaints Commission.
	That may or may not be true, but it is not an adequate answer to the arguments put forward by those who support Lord Ramsbotham's amendments. The Minister places reliance on the prisons and probation ombudsman, but one need only think back a few weeks to when the Government, through the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions, completely ignored and vilified an ombudsman's findings on occupational pensions. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who is no longer in the Chamber, said quite candidly, as a former Home Office Minister, that the Government have form in that respect. If the Government are prepared to act in that way on economics and pensions, which are not life-and-death issues, surely we can expect them not to pay much attention to disobliging reports from other ombudsmen. At any rate, it might not give us much confidence that they will do anything in response to an ombudsman's report. I therefore urge the Government to be a little more careful in deploying that argument.
	The Government's third point was that
	decisions taken by public bodies when exercising public functions have a public policy dimension, involving matters such as the allocation of public resources, which are matters more appropriate for an elected Government to decide than for criminal courts.
	Again, that is a confused argument. It misunderstands the consequences of the Government's own policy of introducing the Human Rights Act 1998. It also misunderstands the evolving nature of public policy and the public interest.
	The hon. Member for Hendon mentioned his private practice; let me mention my experience as a practising lawyer in the field of defamation. What is defamatory changes as public opinion and public standards change. It used to be defamatory to accuse someone of being a Roman Catholic, but that is no longer so. It used to be obviously defamatory to accuse someone of being a homosexual; that situation is on the edge at the moment. Public mores and attitudes change, and so the public policy behind the development of common law changes. The Government's attitude towards the public policy dimension arguments is too rigid, and they fail to understand the importance of the way in which public opinion is changing. The public expect greater access to the hidden world of prisons, and they expect the courts to police deaths in custody. We should not stand in the way of that, and nor should the Government.
	I will end my comments now, because the points have been made, both with great force and with great gentleness, by a number of speakers. I hope that the Government will listen carefully to what those who disagree with them have said, and to the undertone of what the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen and the hon. Member for Hendon said. Although they are supporters of the Governmentand why should they not be?I suspect that they do not want to be pushed too far. In light of what hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber have said, if the Bill returns to the other place without having met the concerns expressed in the amendments that I am seeking to defend, I would urge Members in the other place to stick to their guns. They should advise the Government to think hard about the matter, and to alter their view.
	I expect that the Minister has got bored of compliments, but he knows what we think of him. However, we also know that he is between a rock and a hard place in many different ways. Lady Scotland said in the House of Lords that the Government were not brave enough yet to do what Lord Ramsbotham required of them. Why does not this Minister be brave enough?

Jeremy Wright: I, too, hope that the House does not reject the amendments in this group that the other place has sent us for consideration. I shall make three brief comments about those amendments and the Government's amendment in lieu.
	First, I join in the general acclaim for the way in which the Minister has dealt with the legislation and the amount of movement that he has caused the Government to make. However, in doing so, he has put himself and the Government in a somewhat odd position. He has, as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) said, conceded the principle that deaths in custody could potentially be subject to corporate manslaughter prosecutions.
	Having conceded that principle, the Minister goes on to argue that the reason why those cases should not currently be subject to corporate manslaughter prosecutions is that there will be further protections for those in custody later, and that the Government are working hardI take him at his word on thatto ensure that there are other measures, some of which he spelled out, which ensure that, though the present position is unsatisfactory and there are not sufficient protections for those currently in custody, there soon will be.
	If that is the Minister's argument, and if those who are in custody will in future, we hope, be less vulnerable than they are now, their present vulnerability is potentially more deserving of the protection of a corporate manslaughter prosecution than it ever will be. Therefore, there must surely be a good argument for including corporate manslaughter protection for those who are in custody now, if there ever is a good argument for that. I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey); I see no reason why it should not be now if it could be later.
	Secondly, when we discuss the matter in the House we should be clear that we are not talking about laying the Prison Service or prison governors open to any false or vexatious prosecution claim. The standard of proof in the matter is high. It is clear from the Bill as it standsthe amendments do not cover this pointthat in order to establish guilt of corporate manslaughter and responsibility for a death of that kind, there must be a gross breach of the relevant duty of care. That breach is defined as amounting to a breach of the duty which
	falls far below what can reasonably be expected of the organisation in the circumstances.
	The Minister and others have made perfectly reasonable points about the differences between the challenges faced by those in the Prison Service and by those in other situations. That is entirely fair comment, but any jury and any prosecuting authority would be expected to consider those differences and those particular challenges in deciding whether a prosecution should be brought in the first place. By enabling deaths in custody potentially to be covered by the law, we would not be opening the floodgates. We should therefore have confidence that we can include it without that danger.
	Thirdly, as other Members have said throughout consideration of the Bill, this is a Bill and hopefully an Act which has been long awaited by a great many people. It will be watched and scrutinised carefully by those who have waited so long for it to go on the statute book. It would be tragic if the legislation gave the impression that the private sector is vulnerable to corporate manslaughter prosecutions but the public sector is not, and that in some way protections have been given to those in the public sphere which are no longer, quite properly, available to those in the private sphere.
	I know, of course, that that is not the Government's intention, but it would be tragic if that impression were given. I fear that if we exclude deaths in custody, as the Government wish, there will be that danger. It is right that hard cases make bad law. That has always been true and it is true in this case too, but it would be unfortunate if we ended up making bad law by trying to exclude those cases that may be hard for the Government to deal with. For those reasons, I hope very much that the amendments from the other place will be accepted.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I thank all hon. Members for the quality of the debate and for their welcome for the way in which the Government have listened to what has been said in the various debates in both Houses. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr. Denham) for their support for what is a real compromise. I understand where the Opposition are coming from and it is not surprising that they are not prepared to go along with it, but I hope that I can assure them of our earnestness in what we seek to achieve.
	The hon. Member for Rugby and Kenilworth (Jeremy Wright) hit the nail on the head on the view of those outside the House on the Bill. He is right that it has taken a long time for the Bill to reach this stage and it has been many years in waiting, but it is important that it be seen in the context of the way in which it was introduced as health and safety legislationthe missing piece of legislation in holding corporate bodies to account. That was the Bill's aspiration.
	I acknowledge and accept the thanks for the Government's major step forward in removing Crown immunity. We are the first Government to do that, so I hope that hon. Members will understand our concern about moving too far too quickly. The hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) may say that that is said too often, but in these circumstances it is the right approach.

Stewart Hosie: May I have one more go at the Minister on this point? In Glasgow tonight there will be 60,000 Spanish football fans. When they travel by the airlines they will be owed a duty of care by the operators. When they go to sleep tonight in their hotel rooms they will be owed a duty of care by the hotel companies. When they go to Hampden Park, they will be owed a duty of care by the Scottish Football Association. If they have a drink too many, fall down and are arrested for their own protection by Strathclyde police, the duty of care will cease. Is that not just an inconsistency too far?

Gerry Sutcliffe: We have to remember that in the Bill the duty of care has to be seen in the context of a gross breach of procedure. Hon. Members have understandably focused on deaths in custody, but we must see the Bill in its wider context, and putting that measure in the Bill at this time will not solve the problem of deaths in custody. That is why, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon said, it is important to look at what we propose on the forum for preventing deaths in custody and the changes that we seek with regard to the prisons and probation ombudsman. I understand the focus on deaths in custody this evening, but I ask hon. Members to look at the bigger picture of what needs to happen. The proposal would not solve the issues around deaths in custody, because we need to continue the work of a variety of committees that have made recommendations to the Government on how to deal with that matter.
	There is no sense of the Government trying to protect their position or seeking to tell the director general of the Prison Service that he is off the hook and has nothing to worry about, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen said. That is certainly not the case and that is why I attach a lot of importance to the forum for preventing deaths in custody and the changes that we seek with regard to the prisons and probation ombudsman.
	There are pressures on prisons, and today's debate has focused on prisons, although the definition of custody can be wider and the powers that we propose give us the flexibility to cover the other definition of custody that has been mentioned. I want us to learn from the experiences of the Bill and to look at what can be achieved through other work in relation to deaths in custody.
	Again, I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen and my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon for the work that their Committees have done in considering this issue. They have rightly pushed us to reconsider the issue, and I am pleased that they are both happy to accept the spirit of what we are trying to achieve. Anybody who thinks that they could be bought off so cheaply does not know the depth of experience and skills that they have.
	The forum is already working well in bringing together practitioner and inspectorate professionals to compare approaches. The review can consider many issues, including greater autonomy from Government, increased ability to conduct research, more capacity for information sharing, coroners' rules and prisoner escorts. I hope that we will be able to report on progress within six months.

Edward Davey: Will the Minister ask the review to consider whether the power that Liberal Democrat and Conservative Members wish to see in the Bill would be helpful?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I am sure that the chair of the forum will be robust, as he already has been in talking to me, about what he would regard as the details of how we should reform measures. We want to make the review work and I would hope that the forum will come back to us within six months. That is a reasonable time scale.  [I nterruption. ] In setting up a review, people do not want to say what the outcome will be; they talk about its remit. I would hope that the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon has raised, and points that the chair raises, will be considered.

Dominic Grieve: I am sorry to have to press the Minister on this. Is the implication behind his comments that, if the forum were to come up with conclusions that appealed to the Government, they might never enact the relevant statutory instrument? There is another way of doing this. The Government will not simply enact the legislation in the form in which it has come from the other place, but they could take the necessary time for the preliminary stages before bringing it into force. It would be easy for them to do that without any further amendment. The Minister will understand that one of the anxieties in the House is that although he is saying what is absolutely truthful in his own mind, it will be brushed under the carpet and will never happen.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I do not accept that. That will not be the case because, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen said, the very fact that the principle is there will mean that people will pursue its detail. I have no doubt about that. I am arguing that it is not a panacea for dealing with deaths in custody. In my view, we need to work hard on the forum and we want to make it clear that the prisons and probation ombudsman will be independent from the Government. We want to ensure that he has the formal duty to investigate all deaths in his remitin prisons, immigration detention, young offender institutions, secure training centresand a statutory remit to determine the scope of and procedures for each investigation. There will also be new High Court powers to obtain evidence.
	Those are significant steps. I understand the point about the timetable, but it is no surprise that there is a difference between the Government and the Opposition. I am more inclined to support my hon. Friends' views and the way in which they have dealt with the Government's compromises to try to achieve the consensus that we all want. It is no surprise that the Opposition want to defeat the Governmentthat is the nature of what we do. However, I ask hon. Members to consider what has happened and the considerable movement that the Government have made. The compromise is not window dressing but something genuine to deal with the important issue of death in custody. The whole picture should be examined in the context of the purpose of the Bill.
	Most of the recommendations of the Mubarek inquiry have been accepted and implemented. We have held discussions with the Mubarek trust about other things that we can introduce.

Andrew Dismore: My hon. Friend has given us a good timetable for the forum. I welcome thatit is a reasonable approach. Six months is a reasonable time in which to report back to us. Will he try to be more forthcoming about the timetable for the other two issues?

Gerry Sutcliffe: I understand why my hon. Friend wants to push me, but he will understand why I decline to be pushed. We want to examine the impact of the concessions that we are making. I hear what he says and we will consider the matter further in the time that is left for the Bill's passage. However, I remind all hon. Members that it is a carry-over Bill, which most people welcome and want to be implemented.
	I hope that the principle behind the compromises on other issues can be applied to our discussion. I hope that hon. Members will support the Government motion.

Question put, That this House disagrees with the Lords in the said amendment:
	 The House divided: Ayes 299, Noes 228.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	 Lords amendment disagreed to .
	 Lords amendments Nos. 3, 5, 6 and 10 disagreed to.
	 Government amendment (a) in lieu of Lords amendments Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6 and 10 agreed to.

Clause 1
	  
	The offence

Lords amendment: No. 1

David Hanson: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments Nos. 28, 29, 31, 32 and 35.

David Hanson: I am new to the post at the Ministry of Justice, so I have not had the pleasure of taking part in the Committee stage of the Bill, nor have I had the opportunity to see another place in action. I am assured, however, that the amendments brought forward following consideration in another place are now very much welcomed by the Government.
	I am pleased to seek the House's support for the amendments, because the Government have listened to the concerns expressed there. I particularly thank the noble Lord Hunt and the noble Lord Razzall for their support for the amendments. The amendments deal with what sort of organisation can be prosecuted for the new offence, and strengthen the Bill by extending the new offence to certain types of unincorporated body.
	There has been a wide measure of support for extending the offence beyond the circumstances of an incorporated body, and I pay tribute to those who pressed the Government on the issue, including the Home Affairs and the Work and Pensions Committees in their scrutiny report on the draft Bill. I also pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), for his work in Committee and in steering the Bill through not just two Houses of Parliament but two Departmentsfrom the Home Office to the Ministry of Justice.
	It will be of little comfort to a bereaved family to learn that the most serious criminal penalty for an involuntary killing is not available because the organisation involved lacks a separate legal identity, and the amendmentswhich we are happy to acceptseek to remedy that.
	The new offence of corporate manslaughter is based on the concept of management failure in the organisation, and is not dependent on the guilt of a particular individual. In the case of companies and other corporate bodies, liability under the new offence can be attributed to the corporate legal entity itself. That is not possible in an unincorporated body, which exists as a group of members or individuals and has no separate legal personality. There is a significant difference between the two types of organisation. The amendments respond positively to those problems, and extend the offence to partnerships, trade unions and employers' organisations. I acknowledge the full support of the Conservatives in another place.
	I think it right for us to adopt a cautious approach. Unincorporated bodies are not currently liable for prosecution for manslaughter caused by gross negligence. They include a wide range of smaller and more informal groups, including many in the voluntary and charitable sectors. We do not want to give rise to unwarranted risk aversion in such organisations by exposing them to prosecution for serious offences for the first time, but I think we need to take some action in response to what has been done in the other place.
	The amendments seek to strike a balance by extending the offence in the first instance to a defined range of unincorporated bodies including partnerships and bodies with a quasi-corporate status under statute, namely trade unions and employers' organisations. We have considered monitoring the position to determine whether we should include further organisations. Lords amendment No. 32 provides a power to extend the offence to further categories of organisation through secondary legislation should my noble Friend the Secretary of State, my fellow Ministers and I wish to do so in the future.
	Other amendments in the group are consequential on the extension of the offence to unincorporated bodies, but I draw particular attention to Lords amendment No. 28, which ensures that there is no loophole in the offence because partnerships do not themselves owe a duty of care. Lords amendment No. 35 adds the National School of Government to the list in schedule 1. The school became a non-ministerial Government Department in January 2007, and needs to be added to the schedule to bring it into line with the other bodies in the list.
	I think that hon. Members on both sides of the House should welcome the Lords amendments.

Dominic Grieve: I welcome the Minister to what I believe is his first outing to deal with legislation on behalf of his new Department. It was probably wise of him to delay it until after the resolution of the issue that we debated before this, because he can now enjoy all the pleasures of wallowing in consensus.
	As the Minister said, it was the other place that did the necessary work with the Government's co-operation, but in fairness to those who took part in the Committee stage, I should point out that the issue was first flagged up then. I have no doubt that the Government were right to add partnerships, trade unions and employers' associations which are not corporations. As we established in Committee, some partnershipsfor instance, legal partnershipsare now multi-million pound businesses which, if they were ever allowed to incorporate or indeed to float, would probably go into the FTSE 100 immediately, and I believe that such large organisations should be covered by the Bill.
	I agree with the Minister that we should be careful about the degree to which we extend the scope of legislation of this type. However, once the clear decision was made that we were not criminalising individualswhich I regard as fundamental to the legislationthe scope in this measure became closer in nature to the scope of regulatory offences covered by the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974, which, as the Minister knows, has been applied to undertakings. Its scope is still wider than that of this Bill, because it includes individuals who are running businesses, which would not be appropriate here, but it certainly includes partnerships, trade unions and employers' associations in its remit. I did not understand in Committee why we were excluding those groups from the scope of the Bill, so I welcome this step.
	I also welcome amendments Nos. 32 and 35. Amendment No. 32 would
	extend section 1 to other organisations,
	which I welcome. However, let me make a plea to the Ministeralthough I suspect that it will fall on deaf ears because whoever drafts the statutory instrument will not deal with it. If we are to add organisations, it is essential that we do one of two things: either that we add them one at a time so that when the time comes to vote we can vote on individual organisations and not on packages, orwhich I fear is more likelythat there is proper pre-legislative consultation before we add them. The great objection that I have always had to statutory instruments as a means of varying primary legislation is that they do all or nothing. In terms of adding organisations, one far too often ends up facing the classic problem of approving of four of them and not wanting one. They are a bad way to legislate. However, I welcome the amendments.

Andrew Dismore: I raised the issue we are discussing on Second Reading and on Report, which shows how strongly I feel about it. My main concern is to do with differential treatment between different groups. I cannot see any justification for not having the original formulation of undertakings from the 2000 consultation. In my Committee's view, article 14 of the European convention on human rights is engaged because the various restrictions, exclusions and exemptionseven with the extensionsgive rise to different treatment of individuals in analogous situations in relation to their access to the criminal law in respect of negligently caused death.
	My Committee noted that the Government had previously accepted that to restrict the scope of the offence by excluding unincorporated bodies generally
	could lead to an inconsistency of approach and these distinctions might appear arbitrary.
	That is when the issue of undertakings first arose. It was not included in the original 1996 Law Commission paper, but it was introduced by the Government in the 2000 consultation. I thought that that was a better way of dealing with the problem.

Dominic Grieve: If the hon. Gentleman recalls the relevant debates, he will remember that I suggested there was a completely different way of approaching the proposed legislation which would have enabled undertakings to feature prominently. However, there is a problem: having an undertaking which may be an individual trader under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Bill has an internal inconsistency that we simply cannot get away from.

Andrew Dismore: The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, which I was going to address. When we reviewed the progress of the Bill in our report, we suggested that excluding undertakings in order to deal with the sole trader question would be to throw the baby out with the bath water. We suggested that that would put matters back to front, and that what we should have is undertakings as a general inclusion with an exemption for sole traders. That would be a neater and more consistent way of dealing with the problem. In our view, the case law of the European Court of Human Rights shows that the public nature of a body's function has not been regarded as a reason for excluding criminal liability, but that on the contrary it has been treated as a factor which strengthens the obligations to ensure that recourse to criminal law is available.
	The original and obvious answer to this problem would be to revert to undertakings, but it does not appear that that is obvious to the Government. Therefore, we have the amendments before us now which deal with partnerships, trade unions and employers' associations which are employers. However, many organisations would still be excluded, such as schools. Schoolsparticularly large schoolsare effectively businesses, sometimes with budgets worth millions of pounds, and I would be concerned for the parents of children who were found to have died in grossly negligent circumstances if schools were to be excluded from prosecution. That has happened.
	Similarly on charities, I accept that an argument could be made in respect of small charities but some charities are enormous, multi-million pound international organisations. Why should their staff not have the protection of this law just because it happens to be the case that their charity is not incorporated or is not a partnership? That would be unfair. We would then have a differential between one group of people and another in terms of the protection of the law. The problem is similar to that discussed in the previous debate, except that there is no light at the end of the tunnel to deal with it.
	I certainly do not want to resist the Government amendments, which do constitute progress, but they do not deal with the basic problem of article 14 and differential treatment, and they certainly do not provide the protection that the Bill should provide.

Edward Davey: I rise simply to support the amendments and to echo the comments of the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore). It would have been nice if the Government had listened to everything that we argued for and had included unincorporated organisations fully, whether through the undertakings approach or by linking unincorporated bodies with partnerships, but progress has been made and this place and the other place have helped to achieve it. However, when does the Minister think that the Government might review the measure and take on board the arguments of the hon. Member for Hendon?

David Hanson: I am grateful to the official Opposition and to the Liberal Democrats for their support for the amendments that were introduced in another place. Let me give credit where it was due: this issue was raised by the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) in Committee.

Dominic Grieve: And on Second Reading.

David Hanson: Indeed. I was not in Committee at that time, but I am studying with interest this legislation's progress to date.
	Various issues have been raised and I hope that I can offer some comfort. The hon. Member for Beaconsfield said that he welcomed the fact that amendment No. 32 allows for additions to be considered in due course; indeed, it has been tabled for that specific purpose. In my view, we have struck the right balance. We need to examine what progress is made and, if suggestions are forthcoming, we will consider exercising the power in due course.
	The hon. Gentleman also raised the valid questions of whether we should adopt a take-it-or-leave-it approach and what consultation we would undertake. I can assure him on the Government's behalf that consultation would be central to any additions. If it became clear that we needed to add bodies to the regulations, we would consult widely. The adoption of a take-it-or-leave-it approach would depend on the circumstances, parliamentary time and a number of other factors, but I recognise that it would cause difficulties and, where possible, I will avoid such a situation.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) raised a number of issues. I point out that if amendment No. 32 is accepted, we can add bodies to the scope of the regulations. Local education authorities and school governing bodies are indeed now corporate bodies and are already covered by the offence; I hope that that gives some assurance to my hon. Friend. A good number of charities and voluntary organisations

Andrew Dismore: What will be the status of city academies?

David Hanson: I will have to reflect on that point, because I am not clear whether city academies are themselves corporate bodies. However, I am well aware that local education authorities and school governing bodies are corporate bodies within the local education sector. If my hon. Friend will allow me, I will reflect on that point and if I have an answer before I complete my comments, I will give it to him. If not, I will get back to him.
	A good number of charities are indeed corporate bodies and are already covered. I want to ensure that we do not add a burden to smaller charities in particular. I will reflect on this issue and examine in detail whether such bodies might be added under amendment No. 32, should it be accepted.  [Interruption.] My understanding, on reflection, is that city academies do constitute corporate bodies, on a similar basis to education authorities and schools; I hope that that helps my hon. Friend.
	This issue has been the subject of much debate. The Government can often be accused of not listening to such debates; however, following discussions on Second Reading, in Committee and in the other place, the then Home Office Minister with responsibility for these matters, my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford, South (Mr. Sutcliffe), reached an agreement with the Opposition. I pay tribute to those involved here and in the other place, and I hope that the amendment will be accepted and that we can make progress.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.

Clause 2
	  
	Meaning of relevant duty of care

Lords amendment: No. 4.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendments Nos. 7 to 9, 11 to 21, 23, 24, 26, 27, 33 and 34.

Gerry Sutcliffe: These amendments make minor and drafting amendments to the Bill. This group deals with several amendments made in the other place by the Government to make technical and non-substantive changes to the Bill. Amendment No. 33 introduces a new interpretation clause which gathers together several definitions previously dispersed throughout the Bill. It also provides definitions of employee, employers association, partnership and trade union following the extension of the Bill to certain unincorporated bodies. Amendments Nos. 4, 7 to 9, 11, 14, 16 to 18, 24, 26 and 33 are consequential on the new clause.
	Amendments Nos. 12, 13 and 15 correct two earlier oversights and make minor changes to clause 6 to ensure that it applies comprehensively to NHS bodies and those working on their behalf. Specifically, they add the Secretary of State and Welsh Ministers to the range of potential commissioners of ambulance or transport services to which clause 6 applies, and they correct the earlier omission of strategic health authorities. Amendment 34 clarifies that separate commencement of the Bill's provisions is possible, while other amendments in this groupamendments Nos. 19, 20, 21, 23 and 26make minor drafting and technical changes. With that explanation, I hope that the House will support the amendments.

Dominic Grieve: All these amendments seem to be very sensible. I will draw the amendment allowing separate commencement of different parts of the Bill specifically to the attention of my colleagues in the other place, insofar as it might have a bearing on the debate that we had earlier this afternoon.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I am grateful for the support of hon. Members.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 7 to 9 and 11 to 21 agreed to.

Clause 9
	  
	Power to order breach etc to be remedied

Lords amendment: No. 22.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.

Madam Deputy Speaker: With this we may discuss Lords amendment No. 25.

Gerry Sutcliffe: Amendment No. 25 goes to an important aspect of the Bill that we considered in some detail in our debates in this Housethe question of what sanctions should apply to an organisation convicted of corporate manslaughter. As an offence is committed by the organisation itself, and not an individual, the principal response to date has been a fine and that is the only sanction available for companies convicted of manslaughter under the current law. The Bill goes one step further by introducing the possibility of remedial orders, currently only available under health and safety law.
	Hon. Members urged the Government to think more imaginatively and I pay particular tribute to the efforts of my hon. Friends the Members for Eccles (Ian Stewart) and for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) in this respect. The Government reflected on those arguments and were persuaded to bring forward amendments in the other place to provide for the innovative sanction of publicity orders in the Bill. The publicity orders received the backing of Professor McRory's review of regulatory penalties, which found that organisations were likely to take them very seriously.
	Lords amendment No. 25 therefore gives the court the power to order an organisation to publicise the fact of its conviction and to specify particulars of the offence, the amount of any fine imposed and the terms of any remedial order that has been made. Prior to setting an order, and depending on the circumstances of the case, the judge will be required to ascertain the views of the appropriate regulatory authoritysuch as the Health and Safety Executiveand of the prosecution.
	That will ensure that the judge receives practical assistance in setting the order, and provide an opportunity to establish the views of the victim's family. As with other penalties, the defence will also be able to make representations to the judge before the order is made.
	In setting an order, the judge will be able to require the organisation to supply evidence that it has complied with the order to the appropriate regulator, if that regulator has been consulted. That provides a means of ascertaining that the order has been implemented. Similarly, Lords amendment No. 22 improves the monitoring of remedial orders by giving courts the power to order an organisation to provide evidence of compliance to the regulator consulted when the order was drawn up.
	While we expect that the health and safety regulators will monitor closely the safety regime in any organisation convicted of corporate manslaughter or corporate homicide, Lords amendment No. 22 builds in an extra safeguard to provide that the organisation takes positive action to demonstrate its compliance if the court considers that appropriate. The amendment is important, and I commend it to the House.

Dominic Grieve: I am delighted with Lords amendment No. 25, which will be a very powerful tool in shaming organisations convicted of corporate manslaughter. My experience as a prosecutor in health and safety cases is that, much more than fines, adverse publicity has always been the principal anxiety for larger corporations. Although the fine penalties in these cases are likely to be higher than those in health and safety cases, they will remain perfectly bearable. I have noted in the past the care with which corporations try to handle the media at the court when they are convicted, and that shows that adverse publicity is something that really matters to them.
	The Bill now provides some really inventive possibilities. Requiring large corporations to take out advertisements in national newspapers to publicise their own conviction, and the nature of it, is a very powerful tool. I am wholly comfortable with that, but the courts will ensure that the requirement is proportionate.
	I welcome the provision very much, and I am glad that the Government have made use of the extensive discussions in this House and the other place to take a very important step forward.

Andrew Dismore: I agree with what the hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) has just said. It is difficult to envisage fines much higher than the 4 million levied in relation to the Ladbroke Grove train crash, although that should be contrasted with the 5 million that West Ham had to pay over unregistered players. That shows that victims' families will still face a degree of injustice when they seek reparation for an incident.
	That is important, because the media operations surrounding such convictions have become increasingly professional in their attempt to downplay or minimise what happened. If a court order can be used to get around a company's PR machine, that is very welcome. However, I shall go further than the hon. Member for Beaconsfield, as I hope that the judges who issue the orders will be a little more imaginative too. They should do more than require newspaper advertisements to be taken out. In big incidents that receive worldwide television publicity, they should ensure that the ensuing apology and conviction are also the subject of a TV advertisement.
	Regardless of the adverse publicity that would be incurred, that could be quite expensive for the organisation that has to pay the bill. I therefore hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will confirm that publicity orders cover a much wider range of media than merely newspapers.

Edward Davey: I rise to agree with the contributions from the hon. Members for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve) and for Hendon (Mr. Dismore). This provision is a welcome addition to the Bill, and for large corporations it may even have more impact than the fines that might be imposed. We should recognise that such organisations spend millions on their PR departments: for some, PR and brand management are critical to their business, so ensuring that corporations that commit serious offences get the bad publicity that they deserve is exactly the right thing to do. The provision will have a major deterrent impact, because it gives corporations an incentive to get things right in the first place so that they are not responsible for a death. The amendment will have exactly the effect the Minister wanted, and I congratulate him and those in another place for proposing it.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I am grateful to Members for their support. I agree that the amendment will be a significant part of the Bill.
	In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore), we shall be looking at forms other than newspapers. In the world of corporate social responsibility, where companies use a range of gambits to show that they are being socially responsible, the provision will be a wonderful tool to bring them to book. It will do one of the things we wanted the Bill to doensure that prevention is considered in the procedures of corporate bodies.
	I commend the amendment to the House.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 23 to 29 agreed to.
	After Clause 16
	 Lords amendment: No. 30.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I beg to move, That this House agrees with the Lords in the said amendment.
	In similar vein to the amendments on unincorporated bodies and publicity orders, the Government introduced the amendment in the other place in response to concerns raised in the House. On Report, a question was put as to whether the new offence might have the perverse effect of decreasing individual convictions on a secondary basis for health and safety offences if a successful prosecution for corporate manslaughter meant that health and safety charges could not be put to a jury. That would be an unintended consequence of the new offence. After reflection, we decided that there was merit in making the position clear on the face of the Bill by expressly stating that a conviction for corporate manslaughter would not preclude an organisation's being convicted for a health and safety offence on the same facts if it was in the interests of justice.
	As a result, it is clear that, in appropriate circumstances, proceedings can also be taken against individuals on a secondary basis for health and safety offences, notwithstanding a successful corporate manslaughter prosecution. The provision does not impose new liabilities on individuals, but makes sure that existing liabilities are not inadvertently reduced by the new offence.
	With that explanation, I hope that the House will support the amendment.

Dominic Grieve: I certainly welcome the amendment. It responds to concerns that I raised in the course of our discussions, which may have been raised by other Members, toothat the Bill might have the unintended consequence of making health and safety convictions more difficult. Above all, we wanted to ensure that there was a possibility of offering juries a hierarchy of convictions when they were considering an offence all in one trial: that, the amendment does.
	I confess that, although I am completely happy with subsection (2), I find it difficult to envisage a circumstance in which a corporation convicted of corporate manslaughter might be prosecuted at a later stage for a regulatory breach arising out of some or all of the same facts. I simply flag that up. It would be rather undesirable if that were to happen, because of the costs involved. It would clearly mean looking in the second trial at facts that were looked at in the first. If this is a belt-and-braces provision, I certainly will not stand in its way, but I hope that the Minister will provide me with some slight reassurance about the circumstances in which it is envisaged that the provision would be used, because in reality it is unlikely that it would be required. Subject to that, the broad thrust of the new clauseand of subsection (1) in particularis one with which I am entirely comfortable and which I welcome.

Andrew Dismore: We need to look at the reasons why the amendment was necessary. It was necessary because of the biggest single flaw in the Bill: the lack of individual liability. That is where the Bill falls dramatically short. When the public hear that we are introducing an offence of corporate manslaughter, they expect the consequence of a conviction to be that directors and senior managers will be locked up, but that is one thing that the Bill will not deliver. The Bill will not meet the public's expectation. The amendment is a half-hearted way of trying to address that expectation. I certainly do not disagree with the amendment; in fact, I support it. But it is a weak, mealy-mouthed, half-way house when it comes to what the public expect from a new offence of corporate manslaughter.
	The amendment was necessary because the way in which the Bill was originally phrased meant that directors were less liable to face prosecution than if the new offence had not been introduced in the first place. To charge a health and safety regulatory offence on the same facts as corporate manslaughter would effectively be a duplicitous indictment and could not therefore be sustained in the Crown court. So, now we have to amend criminal law procedure to allow a duplicitous indictment, so that the offence under section 37 of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974 can then be charged against the individual director. That whole weird chain of events follows on from the fact that the Government did not draft the Bill sufficiently strongly in the first place to ensure that it delivers what the public expect.
	The amendment means that an individual director could be charged under the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act with the circumstances giving rise to the corporate manslaughter conviction. But, under that Act, they could be charged only with what is effectively a much less strong regulatory offence. With clause 16 of the Bill excluding individual liability for secondary offences, I believe that one of the main targets for reform has been dramatically overlooked. The purpose of the Bill must be to act as a deterrent and without individual liability, it is far less likely to do so.
	I understand that the Government are considering amending the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act to create some new individual statutory duties on directors to take reasonable steps to comply with health and safety requirements. I welcome that and perhaps the Minister can explain how far those discussions have gone when he replies. But I am not quite sure how much that will add to the section 37 liability under the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act, which provides for an individual offence by a director if the company is convicted.
	What I find really irksome is that we are prepared to go behind the corporate veil and convict a director if his company commits a health and safety at work regulatory offence, but we are not prepared to go behind the corporate veil if his company commits corporate manslaughter. That cannot be right. That is where the Bill falls dramatically short of what the public expect and therefore, although I have campaigned for the legislation for 20 years and very much welcome it, in the end I can give the Bill only two, rather than three, cheers.

Tony Baldry: May I endorse everything that the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore) has said? The test of the Bill will be whether families feel that justice has been done. I had a constituent, Simon Jones, who was a student at Sussex university. To augment his grant, he worked at Shoreham docks. On his first day, tragically he was put in a place of work in the bowels of a ship, where no one could see what was happening. In effect, he was decapitated. I sat with his family in the public gallery at the Bailey when the prosecution was brought, but no one was ever convicted, so the family got no closure.
	I agree with the hon. Member for Hendon that it is perverse that we will go behind the corporate veil on health and safety offences, yet that no individual in any circumstances, however gross, will be liable for prosecution for corporate manslaughter. The test for the BillI hope that it will not be 20 years before the House considers the matter againwill be whether families in our constituencies whose loved ones have been killed at work through negligence for which people are culpable feel that the Bill is capable of providing that justice will be done.

Gerry Sutcliffe: I am grateful to hon. Members for their support. I would not minimise in any way the effect of such deaths on families, which is the motivation behind the Bill and the wider health and safety package.
	We have debated individual liability extensively throughout the Bill's passage. The Government and the official Opposition agreed that individual liability was not appropriate for this Bill [ Interruption. ] I understand that others took a different view. However, this takes nothing away from the many years of campaigning undertaken by my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore). He should take great heart from the fact that he has helped to shape the Bill, even though it falls short of his requirements. He is right that we want to examine individual liability through a review of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act 1974. My hon. Friends the Members for Manchester, Central (Tony Lloyd) and for Eccles (Ian Stewart) are pursuing that matter with Work and Pensions Ministers.
	It is the case that directors may be liable. In Committee, I said that the Health and Safety Commission had examined in depth with stakeholders the idea of statutory duties for managers on health and safety management. Work is being carried out on guidance, and there are already provisions on disqualification under health and safety legislation, which is why that is appropriate route through which to deal with individual liability.
	The hon. Member for Beaconsfield (Mr. Grieve) is right that this is a belt-and-braces provision. The measure is designed to deal with a situation in which an individual defendant cannot be identified in a jurisdiction at the point at which corporate proceedings are brought.
	The spirit of our proceedings on the Lords amendments has shown how Parliament can bring things together positively, despite the notable occasion on which there was disagreement. I am grateful to hon. Members for their participation and to all the officials who have worked to try to get the Bill into its present shape. I hope that the House will support the Lords amendment.
	 Lords amendment agreed to.
	 Lords amendments Nos. 31 to 35 agreed to.

EUROPEAN UNION DOCUMENTS

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 119(9) (European Standing Committees),

Competition: Retail Banking

That this House takes note of European Union Document No. 6238/07 and Addendum 1, Sector inquiry under Article 17 of Regulation (EC) No. 1/2003 on retail banking (Final Report); supports the Government's view that the use of competition policy, via this sector inquiry, is an integral part of developing the Single Market in financial services; and further supports the Government's hope that the Commission, Member States and National Competition Authorities will use the information provided by the inquiry to address any issues identified. [Mr. Alan Campbell.]
	 Question agreed to.

ADJOURNMENT (WHITSUN)

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 25 (Periodic adjournments.),
	That this House, at its rising on Thursday 24th May 2007, do adjourn till Monday 4th June 2007.

ADJOURNMENT (SUMMER)

That this House, at its rising on Thursday 26th July 2007, do adjourn till Monday 8th October 2007. [  Mr. Alan Campbell.]
	 Question agreed to.

NOTICES OF QUESTIONS ETC DURING SEPTEMBER 2007

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 22B(2)(Notices of questions, motions and amendments),
	That the days appointed for the tabling and answering of written questions and for written ministerial statements under Standing Order No. 22B (Notices of questions etc. during September) shall be as follows:
	 Tabling days
	Monday 3rd, Wednesday 5th and Monday 10th September 2007.
	 Answering days
	Monday 10th, Wednesday 12th and Monday 17th September 2007. [  Mr. Alan Campbell.]
	 Question agreed to.

PETITIONS

Post Office

Tony Baldry: I am grateful for the opportunity to present a petition entitled Protect Our Post Offices, which has been signed by large numbers of my constituents in Banbury, Bicester and surrounding villages, who are concerned about the future of the post offices. The petition
	Declares that the Petitioners are extremely concerned about the threat to close half the Post Offices in England and Wales. The Government is considering a huge cut in Post Office funding, closing up to 7,200 Post Offices which will adversely affect over 12,000 pensioners in Oxfordshire alone who hold Post Office Card Accounts.
	Further declares that Post Offices are at the heart of rural and many urban communities. Post Offices offer vital services to some of the most vulnerable people in the community, including those on low wages, unemployed and the elderly who will suffer most if Post Offices are closed on this scale.
	Further declares that the Government has persistently undermined our Post Office network over a number of years. Ministers have prevented the Post Office competing in the market by penalising them and instead playing to the high street bank network, by seeking to withdraw the Post Office Card Account, and by preventing Post Offices selling TV Licences and other products to keep them competitive.
	Further declares that the Government's move to merge the watchdog Postwatch with the other consumer bodies is a clumsy attempt to silence opposition to the closures.
	Further declares that offering compensation to Post Masters and Mistresses is no substitute for what they and communities want which is a strong, competitive Post Office, supported and not undermined by the Government.
	Further declares that the Federation of Small Business has said that small business will also be adversely affected by Post Offices closures and the Federation of Sub-Post Masters and Mistresses, which presented the largest ever petition in support of Post Offices, has said the closures will devastate communities.
	The Petitioners therefore call on the House of Commons to urge the Government to stop action which will lead to the immediate closures of Post Offices and urgently review funding for Post Offices and the services offered by them to enable Post Offices to continue to serve as a cornerstone of the community for individuals, business and the most vulnerable in society.
	And the Petitioners remain etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

Secondary Education (Isle of Sheppey)

Derek Wyatt: It is some relief to me to present my petition this evening, as I am 24 hours late. I thank the Speaker's Office for being so generous last evening. The petition is about the state of secondary education on the Isle of Sheppey. I wish that I could say that it has been run smartly and professionally, but it has been an absolute rag-bag and a shame. It has distressed and upset all the people on the island, and I have collected hundreds of signatures about the situation that has resulted. The petition of the citizens of the Isle of Sheppey
	Declares that the current proposals for the reorganisation of secondary education do not conform to the wishes of the local population..
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges that the Secretary of State for Education ensures that secondary education should only be offered on the basis of a multi-site solution and that a single Academy should not be built on a single site at Minster College on the Isle of Sheppey.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	 To lie upon the Table.

HMRC OFFICES (KEIGHLEY)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Mr. Alan Campbell.]

Ann Cryer: The time is long gone when the prospect of consultation offered the chance to share and exchange views constructively on a level playing field, in the hope that a balanced conclusion could be reached that would take account of the concerns and needs of the interested parties. More recently, consultation has evolved into an exercise to seek to explain, and prepare the ground to implement, a decision that has already been taken. In fact, of late, consultation has frequentlybut not alwayscome to mean rationalisation. It is not surprising, therefore, that many people are becoming disconnected from the political system, if they feel that when asked for their views, those views play second fiddle to a fait accompli that is usually handed down from on high. There can be no better example than the consultation or rationalisation surrounding Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs local offices.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North-East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) has already raised her concerns in the House regarding the plight of HMRC offices in Chesterfield. In reply to those concerns, my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General pointed out that
	The fact is that the department has more accommodation than it needs.
	I also take on board my right hon. Friend's argument that
	Members of Parliament cannot implore the Government to ensure that departments are using resources efficiently in order to eliminate unnecessary expenditure so that it can be transferred to health, education or other front-line services, but then say, 'Do it somewhere else.'[ Official Report, Westminster Hall, 20 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 247WH.]
	Although I take all that on board and would never wish to be part of a political nimby brigade, the Government need to be aware of the impact that centralised decisions will have in constituencies such as mine, Keighley, and North-East Derbyshire. What may be good for London is not necessarily suitable for many northern towns and cities. Indeed, I am often left with the impression that some bright, young London-based civil servant is given the task of geographically rationalising a particular problem, with little appreciation of the realities of the situation outside the capital, let alone a detailed knowledge of the area under review.
	HMRC's presence in Keighley, as in other towns around Bradford, is under threat.

Linda Riordan: I am concerned that we hear a lot of talk about re-engaging with local communities, but then actions such as my hon. Friend describes are taken, which are the reverse of that. I am sure my hon. Friend agrees that it is an unnecessary move that is not in the best interest of Halifax and Keighley or of the staff who work in those offices.

Ann Cryer: May I say how pleasant it is to have my hon. Friend back with us this evening? Of course I agree with her comments.
	The proposed centralisation of services away from the centre of a town like Keighley or Halifax to a city, Bradford, some 12 miles away has a number of effects. First, any exodus of services threatens to undermine the identity of the town. Secondly, a diminution of services damages the pull factor of that town to attract new, wealth-creating business to the area. Thirdly, that in turn can damage the future regeneration and development prospects of the town, thus moving it ever closer to becoming a suburb or a dormitory of Leeds or Bradford. I absolutely hate that concept.
	Fourthly, on a personal level, the centralisation of services inconveniences many people, especially those whom the office is designed to serve. Although I accept that new technology means that the public can make contact via a number of routes, the need for face to face contact will always be of paramount importance. Fifthly, of the 35 employees in the Keighley office, 78 per cent. are female, 49 per cent. are part-time and 14 per cent. are disabled. One of the great achievements of the Government has been their ability to encourage women, often single women with children, to work.
	A process of centralised rationalisation would serve to undermine the core and motivation of that work force. For women who are already juggling the conflicting roles of work and being a mother, increasedin some cases significantly increasedjourney times to work would serve only to make the prospect of work no longer attractive or even viable. What the Exchequer gains on the one hand in the short term is lost on the other through lost revenue and increased reliance on benefits.
	Sixthly, in a semi-rural constituency such as Keighley, further centralisation to Bradford could mean significantly difficult journeys for both staff and customers. The inconvenience would be compounded by the environmental damage as commuting rush-hour traffic was exacerbated, and the already creaking road infrastructure of my constituency would be pushed beyond its limits. Peak-time commuter trains are already packed to overcapacity on the Airedale and Wharfedale lines.
	The fact that those on lowest incomes become the casualties of rationalisation is perhaps the most worrying feature of the proposed exercise. Short-term decisions, purely based on a crude economies of scale argument, to cut a slice from the bottom appear to be a case of sticking-plaster politics. In KeighleyI do not believe that my constituency is very different from many other northern towns and citiesI am increasingly concerned by a lack of strategic planning and thinking. The waste of public money, on a much grander scale than the proposed savings of HMRC, appears to go unchallenged. Without a doubt, much of the responsibility for this lies with the politically, intellectually and financially bankrupt Conservative council in Bradford city hall. However, there is an increasing tendency for public offices and services to work only within their own silos, with little reference to each other or the community beyond.
	Keighley has, since the still unpopular removal of its non-county borough council status and its swallowing up by Bradford metropolitan district council in 1974 due to Tory reorganisation in 1972, also witnessed the departure of its magistrates court, West Yorkshire police from the town centre and processing elements of the Department for Work and Pensions, and as a result there are vacant publicly owned properties. Changes in the provision of legal aid could see my constituency become a legal aid desert. That argument goes on and I hope that those changes are halted for my constituency.
	Rather than tinkering with the edges of efficiencythe easy hit of rationalising the jobs of those on the lowest incomea more creative, thoughtful and strategic approach across the whole of Government and council departments would be far more productive. Decisions being made in isolation to meet the short-term needs of any particular public organisation will have long-term repercussions for the make-up and future of towns such as Keighley. If there is excess capacity in HMRC, or in any Government Department, how can it be employed better in that area to serve the town? Can there be horizontal rationalisation rather than a simple vertical rationalisation approach.
	I wholeheartedly support the Government's attempts to ensure that services are provided effectively, but unless we shift our horizons from a pure isolationist and silo-driven analysis to a broader and more strategic view that takes into consideration the repercussions of decisions at the micro-level, we may well be prejudicing the very efficiency that we seek while at the same time alienating the people who most require our assistance.
	I trust that this contribution to the debate on Government office closures will encourage a more imaginative solution, thus retaining the skills and experience of an exceptionally loyal work force.

John Healey: I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) on securing the debate. I am also very glad to see my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs. Riordan) back in her place and with us again in the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley has made her views and concerns clear, not just in tonight's debate, but consistently throughout the process. She has been involved in and concerned about this issue from the very start of the process, before last Christmas. She has written to my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General several times. She has taken advantage of the offer of briefing sessions that HMRC has organised for Members of Parliament who are concerned about potential changes and the review process in their area, and our debate this evening is the latest in a series of opportunities that she has rightly taken to express the concerns of her constituents and of staff who have approached her about this process.
	I want to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley about two things. First, the senior management at HMRC and the board have not announced a decision to close the Keighley office. They have announced and set out proposals for change that could affect Keighley but are part of a much wider look at the provision and future of services provided by HMRC in Keighley and some of the areas around Keighley, including Shipley, Leeds and Bradford. It is in that broader review that the final decision about posts and the operations at the Keighley office will be taken.
	The second thing that I want to say to both my hon. Friends, who are concerned about the situation in Halifax and in Keighley, is that this is a serious consultation. My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley was right to say that when people are invited to offer views as part of a consultation, they expect, and have the right to expect, those views to be taken seriously. Consultation is clearly different from decision making, and sometimes the decisions taken will not accord with the views offered during the consultation. In such circumstances, people who have contributed their views have a right to an explanation as well as an outline of any decisions taken. That is part and parcel of the important process of information, consultation and decision making. In the end, somebody has to take decisions, which are often, as may be the case with this review, difficult decisions that have to balance several competing interests and will not necessarily be welcomed by all those who have an interest in the process.
	I assure my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley that this is a serious and genuine consultation. As she knows, we are conducting the reviews at different stages in several regions around the country. The one that led the way, which we have completed, was in central London. As a result of the consultation process that we conducted, and as an integral part of the decision-making process, the original proposals were significantly changed. My hon. Friend has put a great deal of effort into the consultation and review process. I assure her that when my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General and I come to examine this and take the final decisions, the views that she has registered will be taken into account.
	We have tried, in the spirit that my hon. Friend suggests is essential in such public policy and public service decision making, to set up a systematic process of review, consultation, point of decision, information about and publication of that decision, and then any implementation of the consequences that arise. At the outset, back in November, before we embarked on these reviews anywhere in the country, HMRC ensured that all staff potentially affected, and all members of this House with constituencies potentially affected, were given the information about the systematic process that we set up. I will return to that in relation to the particular concerns about Keighley.
	I am grateful to my hon. Friend for recognising the essential challenge that we face with HMRC: as a result, largely, of the recent merger of the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise, HMRC has more office accommodation than it needs, and far more than it will need in future. That is a problem. Taxpayers rightly expect any Government Department, and any Minister responsible for any Government Department, to use taxpayers' money to support such services as efficiently as possible. Although the situation varies from region to region, HMRC reckons that it probably has about 40 per cent. more office space than it needs for the future. We have to undergo a process that allows us to address that more effectively.
	It is inevitable that we have to consider questions about the nature and location of the functions in order to deliver the best service and to provide the service with the best value for money that we can explain to the taxpayer, because in the longer term the way in which taxpayers, businesses and individuals deal with HMRC is changing. Increasingly, taxpayers file their tax returns or claim credits to which they are entitled online. They also increasingly deal with HMRC by telephone. In those circumstances, our method of delivering the service and its implications will change. Any long-term decisions that we try to make as part of the review process about our location and office accommodation must take those factors into account.
	It is important to try to bear in mind the fact that the board's principal focus of attention and concern is reducing its use of office accommodation, concentrating on back-office functions, not the public inquiry facilities for which, as my hon. Friend said, face-to-face contact is paramount. One commitment was given at the outset: public inquiry centres will be maintained. Whatever decisions are made about other operations, functions and posts that may be co-located with those public inquiry centres, the inquiry centres will remain as they are now. If, for example, a lease cannot be renewed, the board of HMRC senior managers will ensure that the function is located in a facility that is as close as possible to the current inquiry centre. That will be the case in Keighley, should it be decided to move other functions from the Keighley office.
	As I explained, we have not announced a decision to close the office in Keighley. In January, HMRC senior managers announced proposals, in which reorganising some of the functions currently undertaken in Keighley formed part of a bigger set of changes in the west Yorkshire area. The current consultation is being conducted on those proposals.
	I mentioned the commitment to maintain all public inquiry centres. Other commitments include not moving staff compulsorily from an office before the completion of that office's review. Staff will not be required to move to an office beyond reasonable daily travelling distance. We will consider that carefully. Until September 2007, we have a no compulsory redundancies agreement with the trade unions. All those factors are important.
	The proposals that were published in January for a different way in which to use the offices in west Yorkshire mean that consultation has been invited and conducted with staff, the HMRC trade unions, Members of Parliament and other interested groups. That consultation ran till mid March. A summary of the responses was published for staff on 23 April. I hope that my hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax got a copy.
	It is clear from the summary that the concerns of staff in Keighley were similar to those that my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley expressed. The majority focused on the difficulties that staff felt that they would face as a result of travelling to another, more distant office. Following further work that is being conducted to check the feasibility of proposals and options, I expectif the Paymaster General is back in place, she will expect itto receive the recommendations that flow from the review, including the results of the consultation, for ministerial consideration and decision shortly. Let me say again that final decisions have not been made on the future of the Keighley office. All the information provided will be taken into account either by myself or by my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General, and the particular comments raised by my hon. Friend this evening will be taken very seriously indeed.
	I well understand the concerns of the staff of nearly 40 who are employed by HMRC in the Keighley office. About three quarters of them are women and about half are part-time. They have expressed concerns about the extra travel time and the availability of transport links from their home area to alternative offices. They have also, like my hon. Friend, expressed concern about the impact on the local economy and local communities if jobs such as these are relocated. Those are all concerns that will be taken into account.
	We will do more than just take into account the views expressed about the dimensions of any possible decision. What has been commissioned now as an integral part of the process is an assessment of the impact of any proposals or decisions for change. That is an assessment of the impact of the proposals on taxpayers, on HMRC's customersboth businesses and individualsas well as staff, on local communities and on the local economy. We will also assess the potential impact on the make-up of the HMRC work force. My hon. Friend wants us to reflect on the repercussions of any decisions and to take them into account, and we will do precisely that.
	If and when, or once any decisions are made to relocate posts or to close any offices as part of the wider review process, a well planned support process for staff will come into play. It will mean individual meetings and everyone affected will be able to attend them. That will include discussions about whether any moves that might result from the decisions are reasonable in the circumstances of those individuals. If not, HMRC will either provide work for them in a location that is within reach of reasonable daily travel or look to other arrangements such as alternative hours or home working. I hope that that provides some reassurance to my hon. Friend at this point in the process.
	In conclusion, I welcome this debate and I welcome my hon. Friend's interest in this matter. It is a long-term programme. HMRC and responsible Ministers such as the Paymaster General and myself have to weigh up some quite difficult decisions. We have an obligation to the general taxpayer who provides the money to fund our public services. We have an obligation to taxpayers in providing the service that HMRC provides and we also have an obligation to the staff and the unions that represent them.
	I am confident that the long-term programme of change that we are looking to put in place will deliver a better and more efficient service for the taxpayers who fund it, and one that is better not only for those who need to pay what is due to HMRC but for those who need to claim from it. The consultation is the vehicle that we are using to take into account the concerns of staff, trade unions, taxpayers and others in the wider local areas. We will take those concerns seriously.
	The final decisions on any changes as a result of the west Yorkshire review will come to Ministers and be taken by Ministers in the coming weeks and months. After that point, if there are consequences for the staff involved, every step will be taken to provide them with the support and alternatives that they need, and to take into account the individual circumstances that each and every one of them will face.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty minutes to Seven o'clock.